Charm Crush
https://github.com/charmbracelet/crush
Charm Bracelet's terminal-native AI coding assistant — built in Go atop the Bubble Tea TUI framework. Multi-model via Glamour/Mods integration. Open-sourced 2025; positioned as a TUI-native alternative to web/Electron harnesses for developers who live in the terminal.
Active · Verified 2026-10-26 · fresh as of 2026-10-26 · 47 cited facts, 1 with a third-party source · 1 recorded change · Suggest a correction
At a glance
- Tier
- T3
- Section
- Agent IDEs & coding harnesses
- Latest release
- v0.92.0 (2026-08-31) repo fix
- Pricing
- Free (OSS) repo fix
- Funding
- Charm (independent OSS company, small) repo fix
- Freshness
- 2026-10-26 fix
- Layer
- agent-infra repo fix
- Licensing
- commercial repo fix
- Developer activity
- OpenRank 36.83 (12-mo avg 50.68) · 156 participants — 2026-09 third-party fix
When to use
Optimised for: TUI-native coding agent in Go
Anti-fit: early-stage; smaller community than Aider/Claude Code
Pros & cons
Pros
Beautiful TUI by the team that defined modern terminal UI; Go single-binary distribution is friction-free.
Cons
Early-stage feature surface; lacks the MCP/extension richness of Claude Code or Cline; small contributor base.
Claims & capabilities
Built by Charm (creators of Bubble Tea, Glamour); Go-native; TUI-first.
Technical surface
- API surface
- CLI (Go) — TUI
- Backend storage
- local config
- Deployment
- Self-hosted only — local terminal TUI/CLI (Go)
- Embedding model
- not applicable — not a memory product
- Multi-tenancy
- single-user
- MCP
- yes — MCP client (http, stdio and sse servers)
- A2A
- searched not found
- OpenTelemetry
- searched not found
Alternatives to Charm Crush → live options ranked by shared design, licence, hosting and MCP support
Similar systems
Other agent ides & coding harnesses in the catalog, ranked by inbound references.
- Claude Code (Anthropic) T1
Anthropic's agentic coding tool: Claude as a coding agent in the terminal, IDEs (VS Code, JetBrains), desktop app, web/mobile, GitHub and Slack. Context via CLAUDE.md, skills, hooks, subagents and MCP servers.
- Cursor (IDE) T1
AI-first IDE that forked VS Code; Composer (multi-file edit) and Agent Mode (long-running coding agent) are its flagship surfaces. Memory layer = .cursorrules / Rules; recall via repo-aware Context Engine. Anysphere (parent) raised $900M Series C at $9.9B in May 2025; acquired by SpaceX (announced 2026-08-14, terms undisclosed), product continues under the Cursor brand.
- OpenAI Codex CLI T1
OpenAI's actively developed OSS terminal coding agent (Apr 2025), now written in Rust (codex-rs replaced the original TS CLI); also IDE extension + desktop app. Separate from the Codex Web cloud agent and the retired 2021 Codex model API. The codex mcp-server command (Codex as an MCP server) was deprecated on 2026-08-24 and removed in CLI 0.154.0 (2026-09-09); OpenAI points integrations to the experimental Codex app server, and codex mcp still connects Codex to external MCP servers.
- Opencode (SST) T2
SST team's open-source terminal coding agent — TypeScript, multi-model, MCP-native. Released 2025; explicitly positioned as a permissively-licensed Claude Code alternative. Memory via AGENTS.md (the emerging cross-harness convention).
- Bedrock AgentCore (AWS) T2
AWS Bedrock AgentCore — managed runtime to deploy + scale + observe agents. Multi-component: Runtime, Identity, Memory, Gateway, Browser, Code Interpreter, Observability. Distinct from Bedrock Agents (older fixed-config product); AgentCore is the 2025 framework-agnostic runtime for any agent (LangGraph, CrewAI, Strands, OpenAI Agents SDK).
- GitHub Copilot (Agent Mode) T1
The original AI coding assistant (Copilot in editor; 2021). 2025 evolved into a full agentic surface: chat, completions, Agent Mode (multi-step), and Copilot Workspace. Backed by Microsoft. Distinct row from Workspace — this row covers the everyday in-editor + agent mode product, Workspace covers the hosted spec-driven workflow.
Sources (46 cited facts, 1 third-party)
Each fact links to the page it came from; the badge says who published it (how to read sources).
- What it is Terminal-native AI coding agent (Charm; TUI) repo
- What it does & what's distinct Charm Bracelet's terminal-native AI coding assistant — built in Go atop the Bubble Tea T… repo
- Claims / benefits Built by Charm (creators of Bubble Tea, Glamour); Go-native; TUI-first. repo
- Modalities text repo
- Created 2025 repo
- Latest release v0.92.0 (2026-08-31) repo
- License FSL-1.1-MIT (source-available; converts to MIT after 2 years) repo
- GitHub charmbracelet/crush — ~27.9k stars, last commit 2026-09 repo
- Mindshare 5+ HN threads on launch; Charm's existing audience drove early adoption repo
- Funding Charm (independent OSS company, small) repo
- Customers / scale OSS community; terminal-first devs repo
- Pricing Free (OSS) repo
- Compliance OSS — no formal compliance repo
- Data handling Local CLI; LLM calls go through user's chosen provider repo
- Deployment Self-hosted only — local terminal TUI/CLI (Go) repo
- HQ US (independent; Charm — Christian Rocha) repo
- Founders / pedigree Charm — Christian Rocha (CEO), Bashbunni repo
- Memory volume / scale no scale claim repo
- Code/weights release Open-source — github.com/charmbracelet/crush repo
- API surface CLI (Go) — TUI repo
- Backend storage local config repo
- Multi-tenancy single-user repo
- Encryption TLS for LLM APIs repo
- Schema evolution free-form / no schema repo
- Namespace primitives per-project repo
- Contradiction handling human-arbitrate repo
- MCP support yes — MCP client (http, stdio and sse servers) repo
- Validated verticals coding agents — terminal-first indie devs repo
- Time to running <5min (`brew install charmbracelet/tap/crush`) repo
- Anti-fit early-stage; smaller community than Aider/Claude Code repo
- Optimised for TUI-native coding agent in Go repo
- Adjacent infrastructure Bubble Tea / Glamour ecosystem repo
- Pros Beautiful TUI by the team that defined modern terminal UI; Go single-binary distribution… repo
- Cons Early-stage feature surface; lacks the MCP/extension richness of Claude Code or Cline; s… repo
- Project & sources github.com/charmbracelet/crush; charm.sh repo
- commit-trajectory [{"ym":"2026-01","cum":2584},{"ym":"2026-02","cum":2812},{"ym":"2026-03","cum":2991},{"y… repo
- cost-input-usd-per-mtok 0 repo
- cost-output-usd-per-mtok 0 repo
- cost-tier free repo
- cost-pricing-model free-tier repo
- cost-last-verified 2026-06-29 repo
- architecture-deployment-locus local repo
- licensing-bucket commercial repo
- positioning-platform-vs-product product repo
- taxonomy-three-layer-rollup agent-infra repo
- developer-activity-opendigger {"activity":356.02,"as_of":"2026-09","openrank_12mo":50.68,"openrank_current":36.83,"par… third-party
What changed
Changes to this record's lifecycle, licence, release, pricing and hosting facts, from the catalog's git history. Subscribe (Atom)
- 2026-10-26
- License “MIT” → “FSL-1.1-MIT (source-available; converts to MIT after 2 years)” source
- Latest release “crush 0.x rolling” → “v0.92.0 (2026-08-31)” source
- Deployment “Self-host (Go install)” → “Self-hosted only — local terminal TUI/CLI (Go)” source
- MCP support first recorded as “yes — MCP client (http, stdio and sse servers)” source