Devin, OpenHands, and SWE-Agent are autonomous coding agents — they take a task and work end-to-end in sandboxed environments without human intervention. Pane is the opposite philosophy: you stay in the loop. You run agents, review their work, and decide what ships.
| pane | devin | openhands | swe-agent | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| category | agent manager (human-in-the-loop) | autonomous agent (cloud) | autonomous agent (docker) | autonomous agent (research) |
| human oversight | always — you review every diff before it ships | minimal — works independently | minimal — runs in sandbox | none — fully automated |
| runs on | your machine, your codebase | cloud (cognition's servers) | docker containers | docker / local |
| agent choice | any CLI agent you want | devin only | openhands only | swe-agent only |
| parallel tasks | yes — unlimited panes | yes (cloud instances) | yes (docker containers) | single task |
| open source | yes (AGPL-3.0) | no | yes | yes |
| pricing | free | $20/mo | free (self-hosted) | free (research) |
autonomous agents remove the developer
Devin, OpenHands, and SWE-Agent are designed to work without you. You describe a task, they execute it end-to-end in a sandboxed environment, and deliver a result. The developer is out of the loop until review.
pane keeps the developer in control
Pane runs CLI agents (Claude Code, Aider, Codex, etc.) on your local machine, in your codebase. You see what every agent is doing in real-time. You review diffs inline. You decide what gets committed. You ship with confidence because you reviewed every change.
sandboxed vs local
Autonomous agents run in isolated sandboxes or cloud environments — they don't touch your local setup. Pane runs agents directly in your codebase using git worktrees for isolation. Your agents have full access to your dev environment, dependencies, and toolchain.
one agent vs many
Autonomous agent platforms lock you into their specific agent. Pane runs any CLI agent — and lets you run different agents simultaneously on different tasks. Claude Code for complex features, Aider for refactoring, Codex for quick fixes — all at once.
use autonomous agents for well-defined, isolated tasks where you trust the agent to work independently — bug fixes from GitHub issues, boilerplate generation, or tasks where full autonomy is acceptable.
use pane when you want to stay in the loop. When the code matters. When you need to review diffs before they hit your branch. When you want to run multiple agents on your actual codebase and ship with confidence.
use both — autonomous agents for fire-and-forget tasks, Pane for everything you want to oversee.
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.