Every proprietary harness is just proprietary junk without ability to extend it without polluting context. This includes claude-code, gemini-cli, codex etc. They have tools which hardcode the behavior that is impossible to modify, they add tools you may not need that pollute context, they inject an entire textbook's worth of words into the system prompt which pollutes context, they provide zero observability into what the agent is doing when it's launching a subagent as one example.
They don't provide easy way to use multiple models from multiple providers for varying tasks. One model may be the best thing on earth at one thing, but fail miserably for another. Try orchestrating multiple agents from claude, gemini and codex in any of these proprietary boxes.
They also... suck at TUI UX. I don't know if it was fixed already, but claude code had flickering issue that was unresolved for more than a year.
You need to take a very good care of what goes into your context. A black box of proprietary harnesses is not it. Check out pi [1] for example, which is a very minimal harness with really nice extension system. The idea is that you start with barebones and add things that you need for your own goals.
claude-code HAS to have all these bells and whistles that pollute context to support larger audiences that can't tinker with it. If you have the ability to only pull in only what you need and extend things in a way that works for your workflow, you'll always get the best experience. And claude-code may never be that without making it complicated for the masses. OSS will always win here.
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Every proprietary harness is just proprietary junk without ability to extend it without polluting context. This includes claude-code, gemini-cli, codex etc. They have tools which hardcode the behavior that is impossible to modify, they add tools you may not need that pollute context, they inject an entire textbook's worth of words into the system prompt which pollutes context, they provide zero observability into what the agent is doing when it's launching a subagent as one example.
They don't provide easy way to use multiple models from multiple providers for varying tasks. One model may be the best thing on earth at one thing, but fail miserably for another. Try orchestrating multiple agents from claude, gemini and codex in any of these proprietary boxes.
They also... suck at TUI UX. I don't know if it was fixed already, but claude code had flickering issue that was unresolved for more than a year.
You need to take a very good care of what goes into your context. A black box of proprietary harnesses is not it. Check out pi [1] for example, which is a very minimal harness with really nice extension system. The idea is that you start with barebones and add things that you need for your own goals.
claude-code HAS to have all these bells and whistles that pollute context to support larger audiences that can't tinker with it. If you have the ability to only pull in only what you need and extend things in a way that works for your workflow, you'll always get the best experience. And claude-code may never be that without making it complicated for the masses. OSS will always win here.
[1] https://github.com/badlogic/pi-mono