Agents that finish the job

GC

GitHub Copilot

GitHub

The one that is already in the licence most companies pay for, which is the whole argument. It started as completion and has grown into an agent, and the enterprise controls are what keep it on the approved list.

W

Windsurf

Windsurf

An editor built around the agent rather than having one added to it, and it shows in how much context it keeps without being asked. Worth trying if Cursor feels like it keeps losing the thread.

D

Devin

Cognition

Sold as a teammate rather than a tool, with a ticket queue and a workspace of its own. The interesting question is not whether it can code but whether your issue tracker is precise enough for anyone to work from it.

A

Aider

Open source

Terminal-based, model-agnostic and built on git, so every change it makes is a commit you can read or revert. The choice to make when you want the agent to be a tool rather than a subscription.

C

Cline

Open source

An extension rather than an editor, so it lands inside VS Code where your extensions and settings already are. It asks before doing anything destructive, which is either reassuring or annoying depending on the day.

O

OpenHands

Open source

A self-hosted agent platform rather than a product: you supply the model and the container, it supplies the loop. The reason to pick it is that the code never leaves your infrastructure.

C

Continue

Open source

The most configurable of the editor agents, which is also its cost: it will do almost anything once you have written the config, and nothing much until you have.

G

Goose

Block

An open agent from a company that uses it internally, which tends to produce more honest defaults than a product built for a demo. Runs locally and works on tasks well beyond code.

RA

Replit Agent

Replit

The shortest path from an idea to a running URL, because the editor, the database and the hosting are the same product. The ceiling is real, but most things people want to build do not reach it.

BN

Bolt.new

StackBlitz

Runs the whole toolchain in the browser, so there is nothing to install before the first prompt. Good for prototypes and for people who do not have a development environment at all.

V

v0

Vercel

Narrower than the rest and better for it: it generates interface rather than an application, and the output follows the conventions of the framework it deploys to.

L

Lovable

Lovable

Aimed at people building a product rather than a prototype: accounts, payments and a database are part of the pitch. Worth knowing that the generated code is ordinary enough to keep working with afterwards.

M

Manus

Manus

A general agent that works on the open web rather than inside your repository: research, forms, spreadsheets. The interesting part is how it shows its work, which is what makes the output checkable.

BU

Browser Use

Open source

The library to reach for when the task is “log in and do the thing” and there is no API. It drives a real browser, which means it inherits every one of the web’s rough edges along with its reach.

S

Sierra

Sierra

Customer support agents sold to companies rather than to individuals, priced on outcomes. The reason it works where chatbots did not is that it is allowed to actually resolve the request.

G

Glean

Glean

An agent over everything a company already stores, which is why it is an enterprise purchase: the value scales with how much of the organisation it is allowed to index.

N

n8n

n8n

Not an agent so much as the place agents get wired into everything else. Self-hostable, which matters when the workflow touches customer data, and the visual graph is the documentation.