Best alternatives to agentty in 2026

Terminal-based AI coding assistants are usually built on Node.js or Python, which means installing a whole runtime just to get a text-based helper running — and every time you open it, there's a noticeable pause while everything loads. agentty skips all of that: it's one small program you download and run directly, like a tiny app rather than a whole platform, and it opens in about the time it takes to blink. agentty is an open-source (MIT) terminal AI pair-programming agent written in C++26, shipped as a single static binary (~16.7 MB) with zero runtime dependencies — no Node, no Python, no npm install. Cold start is roughly 3 milliseconds. It supports a wide range of model providers — Anthropic Claude (via OAuth or API key), OpenAI, Groq, DeepSeek, xAI Grok, Google Gemini, Mistral, OpenRouter, Cerebras, Fireworks — plus fully local models through Ollama with no API key at all. Under the hood it includes a local RAG engine combining BM25 keyword search with dense embeddings and GraphRAG for navigating documentation, sandboxed shell execution (bwrap on Linux, sandbox-exec on macOS), a 'Smart Mode' that splits work across strategic/implementation/utility roles, custom skills via .SKILL.md files, and an air-gapped SSH relay mode with TLS pinning for secure remote use. It's actively maintained, with packages for Linux, macOS, Windows, and Android/Termux.