Pane vs Autonomous Agents

frequently asked questions

• +Is Pane like Devin?

  No. Devin is a fully autonomous agent that works independently in the cloud. Pane is a local tool where you stay in the loop - you run agents, review every diff, and decide what ships. Different philosophy: Devin removes the developer from the loop, Pane keeps you in control.

• +Can I use Pane with OpenHands?

  OpenHands runs in Docker containers autonomously. Pane runs CLI agents on your local machine. They serve different use cases - OpenHands for fire-and-forget autonomy, Pane for supervised parallel agent work where you review everything.

• +Is Pane fully autonomous?

  No, and that's by design. Pane keeps the developer in the loop. Agents write code in your terminal, you review diffs inline, you commit and push when you're satisfied. Pane is for developers who want oversight, not full autonomy.

• +Why not just use Devin for everything?

  Devin works well for isolated, well-defined tasks. But when the code matters - when you need to review changes, run multiple approaches, and maintain quality - you want to be in the loop. Pane lets you run multiple agents simultaneously while reviewing every change.

• +Does Pane run agents in sandboxes like OpenHands?

  No. Pane runs agents directly in your codebase using git worktrees for isolation. Your agents have full access to your dev environment, dependencies, and toolchain. OpenHands runs in Docker containers separated from your local setup.

• +Is Pane an autonomous agent?

  No. Pane does not write code by itself. It manages the agents you choose and keeps you in the review-and-ship loop.

• +When should I use Devin, OpenHands, or SWE-Agent instead?

  Use autonomous agents when you want to hand off a task end to end and accept a higher level of delegation. Use Pane when you want local terminal agents with continuous oversight.

• +Can Pane run autonomous-style CLIs?

  If an autonomous tool has a CLI that runs in a terminal, Pane can run it. Pane does not need a custom integration for every tool.

• +Does Pane keep code local?

  Pane runs local terminal sessions against your local repositories. The privacy model still depends on the agent CLI you run, but Pane itself is the local manager.

• +Why not let one autonomous agent do everything?

  Parallel local agents are useful when you want multiple small, reviewable diffs instead of one large opaque handoff. Pane is designed around that workflow.

• +Does Pane help with review?

  Yes. Pane includes diff and git workflow so you can inspect what each agent changed before committing, merging, or discarding it.

• +Can I use Pane and autonomous agents together?

  Yes. Pane is a terminal manager for agents, so it can sit above any CLI-based workflow you trust.

• +Do autonomous coding agents work on Windows?

  Cloud-hosted autonomous agents like Devin and OpenHands run in Docker containers, so your local OS doesn't matter. The question is whether your agent manager runs on Windows. Pane runs natively on Windows (x64 and ARM64), macOS, and Linux - so you can manage any agent from any platform.