AI · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to Agent-desktop – Native desktop automation CLI for AI agents
I've been building computer-use tools for a while, and I quietly launched this about a month ago (122 Stars on GH). I figured it was worth sharing here. Over the last few months, a lot of computer-use agents have come out: Codex, Claude Code, CUA, and others. Most of them seem to work roughly like this: 1. Take a screenshot 2. Have the model predict pixel coordinates 3. Click x,y 4. Take another screenshot 5. Repeat That works, but it's slow, expensive in tokens, and fragile. If the UI shifts a few pixels, things break. And the model still doesn't know what any element actually is. But the…
Agent-desktop is a native desktop automation CLI tool for AI agents that uses structured accessibility APIs instead of screenshot-based pixel clicking. It works with macOS Accessibility API, Windows UI Automation, and… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Prices are shown for the 1 we have checked on their own sites, 1 of them free or with a free tier.
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ComputerX▲560Introducing the first-ever desktop AI agent that gets your computer tasks done for you. Like having your own AI operator that seamlessly integrates with every app on your computer!
2025 · computerx.ai · its alternatives →
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Cline Desktop Appfree tier▲265An open-source app for open-weight models
Sep 2026 · cline.bot · its alternatives →
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Work with a powerful coding assistant anywhere
2025 · its alternatives →
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Atomic▲140Hey HN, I’ve been building Atom (https://github.com/rush86999/atom), an open-source, self-hosted AI automation platform. I built this because while tools like OpenClaw are excellent for one-off scripts and personal tasks, I found them difficult to use for complex business workflows (e.g., managing invoices or SaaS ops). The main issue was State Blindness: the agent would fire a command and assume it worked, without "seeing" if the UI or state actually updated. I just shipped a new architecture to solve this called Canvas AI Accessibility. The Technical Concept: Instead of…
2023 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Generate no-code agents in natural language
2024 · chromewebstore.google.com · its alternatives →
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That's a bold claim. But I genuinely feel like I might have actually solved computer use (demo: https://x.com/mdlahfir/status/2088109763783700827?s=20) For context, I've been building agent-desktop (Inspired by agent-browser by Vercel Labs), an automation CLI for desktop apps. It's like Playwright but for desktops, not just native, but for Chromium apps as well. Trust me, yes, Chromium apps whose accessibility tree is dense. MacOS is GA; I'm almost close to launching for Windows and Linux! So, how did I solve it? Basically interoperability. The biggest issue with…
Aug 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Cline CLI 2.0▲297Parallel agents & headless CI/CD in your terminal
Feb 2026 · cline.bot · its alternatives →
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LapuAi▲68Desktop-native AI agent for every app, file & browser
Jul 2026 · lapu.ai · its alternatives →
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Libretto (https://libretto.sh) is a Skill+CLI that makes it easy for your coding agent to generate deterministic browser automations and debug existing ones. Key shift is going from “give an agent a prompt at runtime and hope it figures things out” to: “Use coding agents to generate real scripts you can inspect, run, and debug”. Here’s a demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cDpIntmHAM. Docs start at https://libretto.sh/docs/get-started/introduction. We spent a year building and maintaining browser automations for EHR and payer portal…
Apr 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Hermes Desktop▲215An open source terminal agent that builds its own skills
Jun 2026 · hermes-agent.nousresearch.com · its alternatives →
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agentbrowse▲89Give your AI coding agent the web as a command line
Jun 2026 · npmjs.com · its alternatives →
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Open-source Computer Use MCP for AI agents
May 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Hi HN! Smooth CLI (https://www.smooth.sh) is a browser that agents like Claude Code can use to navigate the web reliably, quickly, and affordably. It lets agents specify tasks using natural language, hiding UI complexity, and allowing them to focus on higher-level intents to carry out complex web tasks. It can also use your IP address while running browsers in the cloud, which helps a lot with roadblocks like captchas (https://docs.smooth.sh/features/use-my-ip). Here’s a demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62jthcU705k Docs start at…
Feb 2026 · docs.smooth.sh · its alternatives →
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AgentGrid▲77Hi HN, I’m Michael, I built AgentGrid with my friend Souren because we were tired of losing our coding sessions and couldn't keep track of what was actually being built across our many projects. Our approach was to use an infinite canvas desktop app for the TUIs we already know and love, mainly claude + codex. We drew inspiration from Figma and Railway. Overtime we added image nodes, notes, terminals, coding editors, source control, etc. I wasn't sure about it at first. It took me a month to give the first version Souren built a real try. What got me was an Apple System Update I've been…
Jul 2026 · agentgrid.sh · its alternatives →
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Hi HN, I forked chromium and built agent-browser-protocol (ABP) after noticing that most browser-agent failures aren’t really about the model misunderstanding the page. Instead, the problem is that the model is reasoning from a stale state. ABP is designed to keep the acting agent synchronized with the browser at every step. After each action (click, type, etc), it freezes JavaScript execution and rendering, then captures the resulting state. It also compiles the notable events that occurred during that action loop, such as navigation, file pickers, permission prompts, alerts, and downloads,…
Mar 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Codex now runs natively on Windows with secure sandbox
Mar 2026 · learn.chatgpt.com · its alternatives →
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Automate boring work. Extensible and free desktop AI agent.
Aug 2026 · agent-one.dev · its alternatives →
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agents-cli▲145The CLI your coding agent uses to ship agents
Jul 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Get 10x speed for building automations. AI copilot is here
2025 · agentcraft.pro · its alternatives →
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AgentNotch▲120Real-time AI coding assistant telemetry in your Mac's notch
Jan 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Our team lives in Slack, but we don’t have access to the Slack MCP and couldn’t find anything out there that worked for us, so we coded our own agent-slack CLI * Can paste in Slack URLs * Token efficient * Zero-config (auto auth if you use Slack Desktop) Auto downloads files/snippets. Also can read Slack canvases as markdown! MIT License
Feb 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 24WR
What's up HN! This is Jared and Art. We met on HN and started building together. Over the last few months we've been thinking a lot about how AI agents are going to impact the future. We want agents to be something that's actually useful for normal people as well as the 10x'ers. This lead us to building Meha over the last few months, our first swing at our vision! We saw OpenAI release Operators then we said f*k it let's post. Meha is a desktop app that uses your Chrome browser to execute tasks in the background. It controls your installed Chrome browser and uses LLMs with playwright to plan…
2025 · meha.ai · its alternatives →
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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →