OpenHands vs OpenCode: two open-source coding agents, and where open-source Kortix takes over

What each tool is built to finish

OpenHands is a self-hosted control center for coding agents and automations. It starts a conversation with an agent, connects to one or more agent servers, and runs the agent you point it at, including its own OpenHands agent, Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, Pi, or OpenCode. Its unit of work is a coding conversation, or an automation that ends in a pull request. You run it on a laptop, in Docker, on a server, in your own VPC, or in OpenHands Cloud.

OpenCode is an open-source coding agent built for the terminal, with a desktop app and an IDE extension beside it. You run it inside the project you are working on, plan first in a read-only mode, then build, and undo or redo what it changed. Its unit of work is one coding session in your own working copy, and there is no control plane to host. Kortix runs the same engine, because OpenCode is the harness.

When OpenCode is the right pick

Choose OpenCode when the work is code, the code is on your machine, and the agent belongs beside your editor rather than on a server. OpenCode ships a plan mode that denies edits and asks before it runs shell commands, a build mode for changes, and share links so a teammate can read a session. It is model-agnostic and privacy-first: it stores no code or context on its side, and it takes any provider, including a local model.

When OpenHands is the right pick

Choose OpenHands when an engineering team wants coding agents running around the clock and reaching past one laptop. Agent Canvas runs agents on a dedicated server, in Docker, or in OpenHands Cloud, and it fires them from a GitHub issue, a Slack message, a Jira ticket, or a schedule. The agent does the work, then opens a pull request an engineer reviews. Where OpenCode is the agent beside one developer, OpenHands is the shop that keeps several agents busy on the team's repositories.

Where a team outgrows a coding-agent harness

Both tools end the work at code. OpenHands opens a pull request and OpenCode leaves a diff in your working copy, so the review is a source diff. That gate holds while the reviewers are engineers. It stops holding when another team delegates a job: an outbound sequence, a reconciled month, or a support reply has no source diff to read, and the agent has to act in a CRM, a billing tool, or a ticket system rather than in a repository alone. The wider field of options is grouped on OpenHands alternatives, compared.

How open-source Kortix covers the work past code

Kortix is built for the work past code: your agents, their skills, your company memory, and every connector live in one git repo you own. A project is a git repo with a kortix.yaml at its root, and one session runs one agent on its own cloud computer and branch. The session id, the sandbox, and the branch name are one string, so a run traces to the diff it produced, and session work reaches main through a change request a person approves. Merge is default-deny for agents.

The reach is wider than a coding harness. The same agents start from the web app, Slack, Microsoft Teams, the CLI, or a cron schedule, and they reach 3,000+ apps in a click, plus MCP, OpenAPI, Postman, GraphQL and raw HTTP. Connector credentials are brokered server-side and never enter the machine. Run it on Kortix Cloud, in your VPC, or on your own on-prem network. Self-host is free. Open source: read it, fork it, audit it.

OpenHands vs Kortix sets out the move project by project, and the same decision appears from the product side on Kortix.