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AI · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to Zerminal – a terminal-first Zed fork for AI coding agents

A terminal-first development environment for agentic coding. Use Claude Code, Codex, Aider, and other CLI agents in a focused workspace.

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 2 we have checked on their own sites, 2 of them free or with a free tier.

  1. 1

    Parallel agents & headless CI/CD in your terminal

    Feb 2026 · cline.bot · its alternatives →

  2. 2
    Zed 1.0▲365

    High-performance, open source, multiplayer code editor

    May 2026 · zed.dev · its alternatives →

  3. 3

    AI pair programming directly in your terminal

    2025 · cosine.sh · its alternatives →

  4. 4

    For almost two years, we've been developing Charlie, a coding agent that is autonomous, cloud-based, and focused primarily on TypeScript development. During that time, the explosion in growth and development of LLMs and agents has surpassed even our initially very bullish prognosis. When we started Charlie, we were one of the only teams we knew fully relying on agents to build all of our code. We all know how that has gone — the world has caught up, but working with agents hasn't been all kittens and rainbows, especially for fast moving teams. The one thing we've noticed over the last 3…

    Jun 2026 · charlielabs.ai · its alternatives →

  5. 5

    I kept running into a structural problem with AI coding tools. You try one agent. It makes changes. You try another. Now you're manually diffing branches and cleaning up experimental commits. The tools are powerful, but the workflow isn’t designed for comparison. So I built Parallel Code. It runs Claude Code, Codex, and Gemini CLI natively (no API wrapper, no feature abstraction), but isolates each agent in: its own terminal its own Git worktree its own feature branch The workflow becomes: Spawn N worktrees Assign one AI agent per worktree Let them implement independently Compare diffs Merge…

    Mar 2026 · parallelcode.app · its alternatives →

  6. 6

    The CLI your coding agent uses to ship agents

    Jul 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  7. 7

    One dashboard to run and organize multiple AI CLI agents

    Dec 2025 · solhun.com · its alternatives →

  8. 8
    Boxes.devfree tier, from $19/mo▲112

    Hi HN, we’re Nick and Drew, and we’re building boxes.dev – the first cloud-only agentic dev environment (ADE) that gives every Codex and Claude Code agent its own cloud computer. We’re two engineers who previously built Gem (co-founder/CTO and first hire), and we spent the last year coding almost exclusively using Codex and Claude Code. It’s been a huge change to how we code, and it’s been exhilarating seeing the models keep getting better – but we eventually realized that developing on localhost was holding us back: - Git worktrees are clunky to set up and use for parallelizing work -…

    Jun 2026 · boxes.dev · its alternatives →

  9. 9
    DexCode▲94

    Your AI Agent builds the Deck & you never leave the terminal

    Mar 2026 · co-r-e.github.io · its alternatives →

  10. 10

    A lightweight, single-binary coding agent harness written in Go. Anthropic, OpenAI, Kimi, DeepSeek, Google Gemini, Ollama, managed llama.cpp models, five built-in tools, three run modes, extensions in any language, and a built-in Telegram bridge.

    May 2026 · zot.sh · its alternatives →

  11. 11CB

    Clink lets you use the coding agents you already pay for (Claude Code, Codex CLI, Gemini CLI, Z.ai GLM) to build → live-preview → ship apps in an isolated container. No token purchases, no extra cost for coding. Just link your existing Claude/OpenAI/Gemini account and start building and deploying instantly. Why we built this: Claude Code is our go-to for coding, but it lacked preview + deploy capabilities. We didn't want to pay Lovable again just for that. Different agents excel at different tasks - Claude Code for versatility, Codex for complex work, GLM for speed. We needed one…

    2025 · clink.new · its alternatives →

  12. 12

    AI powered cli coding agent that monitors your dev/test server and fixes errors and adds features - vysakh0/dravid

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

  13. 13
    Code▲20

    Hey HN, Today we're launching Code, a community-driven, open-source coding agent for your terminal. It's a fork of OpenAI's codex with a focus on developer ergonomics and local control. Key features: - Browser integration – attach to your Chrome via CDP or use a built-in headless browser. You can browse pages, run the CLI in a browser session, and even take screenshots from the terminal. - Multi-agent commands – /plan, /solve and /code orchestrate multiple models (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini) to propose and implement solutions, with consensus or race options. - Diff viewer – see…

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  14. 14

    Run Claude Code, Codex, AGY, and Grok Build side by side on your Mac. Every change gets reviewed by a second agent before you accept it.

    18d ago · offrun.dev · its alternatives →

  15. 15
    Maestro▲20

    Bloomberg Terminal for CLI agents

    Jan 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  16. 16

    The IDE built for driving agents, not typing code

    Aug 2026 · canopyide.dev · its alternatives →

  17. 17

    LangGraph orchestration scaffold (Python) + restricted tool runner (Rust) with batching and run traces. - christianmeurer/Lula

    Apr 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  18. 18

    Stop AI agents from installing malicious packages.

    Jul 2026 · agentinel.habitwala.in · its alternatives →

  19. 19

    A native macOS terminal app for AI coding tools. Run Claude Code, Gemini CLI, Codex, Aider, and more in a tabbed, persistent terminal.

    Mar 2026 · moltty.com · its alternatives →

  20. 20
    Aether▲26

    Since coding agents like Claude Code and Codex came out, I've been pretty obsessed with them. It's hard not to when you're getting a 20x discount on inference. I've also been frustrated by them a lot. I hated walking around with my laptop lid open while connected to a hotspot on my phone, having to tediously accept commands so I don't lose my root directory, and running out of RAM when running multiple agents that were spinning up dev servers in different worktrees at once. A lot of people would say existing cloud agents are the solution to this, as none of the above problems apply to any…

    Jul 2026 · runaether.dev · its alternatives →

  21. 21

    We built a Rust MCP server, which wraps the excellent headless terminal (HT)[1] to makes it available for agentic coding tools. Most agentic coding tools struggle with blocking, interactive terminal tools (all the boilerplate generator, infra CLI tools etc). This is because many existing CLI dev tools are built for humans and require interactive input. We built this so agentic coding tools (Claude Code, Cursor, Memex, etc) can “see” and “interact” with terminals exactly like humans do. In our demo video [2], you'll see it operating vim/emacs just as a human would - selecting options,…

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  22. 22

    I’ve been tinkering with what a “multi-agent IDE” should look like if your day-to-day workflow is mostly in terminal (Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, etc.). The more I played with it, the more it collapsed into three fundamentals: * A good TUI: Terminal is the center stage, with other stuff (CodeEdit, Diff, Review) baked on the side. I don’t like piping Agent’s output through some electron wrapper, here you get to run CC/Codex/Droid/Amp/etc directly. * Isolation: agents shouldn’t step on each other’s toes. The simplest primitive I’ve found is Git worktrees. It is not as…

    Jan 2026 · agentastic.dev · its alternatives →

  23. 23

    Run multiple AI coding agents at once, in one grid

    Sep 2026 · panecrew.dev · its alternatives →

  24. 24

    AI coding agent in your terminal. Multi-model. Free.

    Dec 2025 · novakit.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 →