8 Best The Agency Alternatives in 2026 (Open Source)
The Agency — A collection of specialized AI agents with distinct expertise, personalities, and workflows. Largest curated library of specialized AI agent personas with multi-tool compatibility — vs writing custom system prompts from scratch
Short answer
- Closest match to The Agency: Evo.ninja.
- Most actively developed: DeerFlow (1,263 commits in the last 90 days).
- Fastest growing: gstack (+13,186 GitHub stars in the last 30 days).
- No commit in 6+ months: Evo.ninja, Claude Engineer, CodeFuse-ChatBot and TinyTroupe.
These 8 open-source tools do the same job. They are ordered by how closely they match The Agency, with live GitHub data so you can see which projects are actively maintained.
| Tool | GitHub stars | Stars / 30d | Last commit |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Agency(original) | 155.6k | +14,588 | 2026-10-01 |
| Evo.ninja | 1.1k | 0 | 2024-07-19 |
| gstack | 134.7k | +13,186 | 2026-09-29 |
| Claude Engineer | 11.2k | +7 | 2024-12-12 |
| Roo-Code | 24.3k | +229 | 2026-05-15 |
| OpenHands | 89.7k | +3,160 | 2026-10-01 |
| DeerFlow | 83.3k | +5,318 | 2026-10-01 |
| CodeFuse-ChatBot | 1.3k | +1 | 2024-07-01 |
| TinyTroupe | 7.6k | +35 | 2026-03-28 |
1. Evo.ninja
A versatile generalist agent.
What sets it apart: vs single-persona agents: dynamic execution loop that predicts and switches between specialized personas (text, data, web, code) in real-time — adapts strategy mid-task rather than using one fixed approach
Best for: Multi-domain task automation requiring different skill sets; Research synthesis combining web search and data analysis; Complex tasks benefiting from dynamic agent specialization
2. gstack
Use Garry Tan's exact Claude Code setup: 15 opinionated tools that serve as CEO, Designer, Eng Manager, Release Manager, Doc Engineer, and QA
What sets it apart: vs bare Claude Code: 23 specialist roles with structured sprint process; vs Cursor: not an IDE but a process layer that turns any coding agent into a virtual team with CEO/design/eng review
Best for: Solo founders shipping production code with AI; Technical CEOs who still want to code; Teams wanting structured AI-assisted code review and QA
3. Claude Engineer
Self-improving Claude 3.5 Sonnet assistant that dynamically creates and manages tools for software development
What sets it apart: vs Open Interpreter / Aider: self-improving architecture where Claude creates and manages its own tools dynamically — the AI expands its capabilities through conversation, with dual web/CLI interfaces
Best for: Developers wanting AI that autonomously expands its own capabilities; Claude-focused workflows needing custom tool creation; Power users wanting both web and CLI interfaces for AI interaction
4. Roo-Code
Roo Code gives you a whole dev team of AI agents in your code editor.
What sets it apart: vs Cursor: open-source with customizable modes and MCP support; vs GitHub Copilot: deeper codebase context and multi-mode interaction rather than inline suggestions
Best for: VS Code users wanting AI coding assistant with mode flexibility; Teams building standardized AI-assisted workflows; Developers who want open-source alternative to Cursor
5. OpenHands
🙌 OpenHands: AI-Driven Development
What sets it apart: Unlike Claude Code and Codex (single-model CLI tools), OpenHands is model-agnostic with the highest SWE-Bench score (77.6%) and offers SDK, CLI, GUI, and enterprise deployment — a full-stack autonomous developer platform
Best for: Engineering teams wanting an autonomous coding agent that can resolve real GitHub issues end-to-end; Enterprises needing self-hosted AI developer tools with Jira/Slack integration
6. DeerFlow
Open-source agent harness for long-horizon research, coding, and content creation
What sets it apart: vs AutoGPT: purpose-built for deep research with sub-agent orchestration and sandbox; vs LangGraph: higher-level harness with built-in memory, sandbox, and skill system rather than bare graph framework
Best for: Deep research and exploration tasks; Building multi-agent systems with sub-agent orchestration; Teams wanting coding agent integration (Claude Code/Codex)
7. CodeFuse-ChatBot
An intelligent assistant serving the entire software development lifecycle, powered by a Multi-Agent Framework, working with DevOps Toolkits, Code&Doc Repo RAG, etc.
What sets it apart: vs GitHub Copilot/Cursor: multi-agent DevOps assistant from Ant Group with repository-level code analysis, knowledge graphs, and sandboxed execution — designed for enterprise private deployment
Best for: DevOps teams needing AI-assisted code analysis and generation; Enterprise teams wanting private, self-hosted coding assistant with RAG
8. TinyTroupe
LLM-powered multiagent persona simulation for imagination enhancement and business insights.
What sets it apart: vs other multi-agent frameworks: Microsoft Research project specifically designed for business simulation and imagination enhancement, with deep persona customization, empirical validation tools, and focus on productivity/business insights rather than task automation
Best for: Simulating focus groups for product/marketing feedback; Testing software with realistic synthetic user inputs; Business insight generation through persona simulation
FAQ
- What are the best alternatives to The Agency?
- The closest open-source alternatives to The Agency are Evo.ninja, gstack and Claude Engineer, followed by Roo-Code, OpenHands and DeerFlow. They are ranked by how closely they match what The Agency does.
- Which The Agency alternative is the most popular?
- gstack has the most GitHub stars among The Agency alternatives, with 134,650 stars.
- Which The Agency alternative is the most actively maintained?
- By recent activity, DeerFlow (1,263 commits in the last 90 days) is the most actively developed alternative.