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Agent-shell Alternatives
Similar projects and alternatives to agent-shell
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Kargo
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AppSignal
Monitoring that respects your time & budget. APM, error tracking, and dashboards for modern web apps. Ten-minute setup, transparent flat pricing, and support from engineers who actually use the product.
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hof
A developer experience centered on CUE. Unifies schemas, data models, deterministic and agentic code generation, workflow and task engine, dagger powered environments, coding assistant, and vscode extension; woven together on the CUE lattice. Squint harder if you can't see the cube :]
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swiper
Ivy - a generic completion frontend for Emacs, Swiper - isearch with an overview, and more. Oh, man! (by abo-abo)
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dotfriedrice
Set up a developer friendly niri / Arch Linux system in minutes. Also supports WSL 2, Debian, Ubuntu and macOS for CLI tools!
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contextify
Contextify - macOS companion for Claude Code and Codex CLI. Monitor AI coding sessions with real-time timeline and LLM summaries.
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SaaSHub
SaaSHub - Software Alternatives and Reviews. SaaSHub helps you find the best software and product alternatives
NOTE:
The number of mentions on this list indicates mentions on common posts plus user suggested alternatives.
Hence, a higher number means a better agent-shell alternative or higher similarity.
agent-shell discussion
agent-shell reviews and mentions
Posts with mentions or reviews of agent-shell.
We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives
and similar projects. The last one was on 2026-08-27.
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Emacs 31: An unofficial guide to Markdown-ts-mode
Never heard of that one. The most popular ways for agent stuff seems to be https://github.com/xenodium/agent-shell , or just opening a terminal in emacs and using claude code. If you want to run it through an emacs terminal, consider using https://github.com/dakra/ghostel#ghostel (or vterm, or eat)
- What's New in Emacs 31.1?
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Emacs 31.1 will release on 8/24
> I wish more AI harnesses could also have a dumb-terminal mode
you don't need that, you can use an acp (agent-client protocol) client like agent-shell - https://github.com/xenodium/agent-shell
I've tried it with cursor and it works okay.
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Show HN: Agent-shell β vendor-neutral chat with AI agents in Emacs
I recently read someone [1] make the case for a sweet spot blending the best of CLI agents (fast, keyboard-driven, in a terminal) and desktop agents (rich UI: inline images, diffs).
This resonated with me as fairly on point to what agent-shell has been going for, except from inside Emacs, which arguably gets you plenty of goodies at once: it's fast and text/keyboard-driven like a terminal, also renders inline images, markdown and tables like a desktop app, but with first class integration into your text editor (no context switch). Also, since it's all elisp, you can bend any of it to your own workflow.
This release pulls more of that desktop-like experience with richer TAB navigation, actionable items (resizable images) and a more chat-like experience.
Also worth highlighting, agent-shell is vendor-neutral: it speaks ACP, so you can drive Claude, Codex, Gemini... without relearning your tools.
Repo: https://github.com/xenodium/agent-shell (also on MELPA). Full 0.73 notes: https://xenodium.com/agent-shell-0-73-updates. Feedback welcome.
[1] Sorry, I read this somewhere recently but couldn't find it again.
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Emacs 31 Is Around the Corner: The Changes I'm Daily Driving
Also, if a slash command is missing, that's because the model's ACP client doesn't implement it:
https://github.com/xenodium/agent-shell#why-doesnt-agent-she...
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Cursor Introduces Composer 2.5
> Itβs clearly being ran by someone who comes from a social app or sales app growth hacking background.
I fixed that by using cursor the agent but not the UI.
I'm just running cursor in GNU Emacs via agent-shell (https://github.com/xenodium/agent-shell). Their cli client (aptly named "agent") supports ACP (agent client protocol) so the UI can be skipped altogether.
I know this sounds like a meme ("use x in emacs") but at this point at the very least i can keep my workflows and my UI all the same and focus on my work rather than "where did $company put $feature this month".
- Helix: A post-modern text editor
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Claude Code is suddenly everywhere inside Microsoft
As an aside: have you thought about using agent-shell?
https://github.com/xenodium/agent-shell
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Agent-shell: A native Emacs buffer to interact with LLM agents powered by ACP
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> I'd love to know how that is wired to the agents; is that input sent over ACP?
Yes. All traffic goes over ACP between Emacs and the agent. You can inspect the traffic using agent-shell itself.
https://github.com/xenodium/agent-shell?tab=readme-ov-file#h...
> Is that just sending to the shell?
The compose buffer is an UX abstraction on top of the agent shell buffer which is a native Emacs buffer, but ultimately all traffic is sent over ACP.
agent-shell's links to blog posts may be of interest https://github.com/xenodium/agent-shell?tab=readme-ov-file#n...
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Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (December 2025)
https://LMNO.lol Drag and drop your markdown to the web and get a blog.
Also because the web/blogs lost itself in tracking, bloat, paywalls... and I miss some of the quirkiness.
My blog runs on it: https://xenodium.com
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A note from our sponsor - SaaSHub
www.saashub.com | 13 Sep 2026
Stats
Basic agent-shell repo stats
17
1,844
9.9
3 days ago
xenodium/agent-shell is an open source project licensed under GNU General Public License v3.0 only which is an OSI approved license.
The primary programming language of agent-shell is Emacs Lisp.
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