Agency vs Claude Code — Differences

Last updated: 2025-07-14

1. API Backend — Fundamental Difference

	Claude Code	The Agency
API	Anthropic SDK directly (claude-opus-4 etc.)	OpenRouter (OpenAI-compatible chat completions)
Auth	Anthropic API key / OAuth	OpenRouter API key
Message format	Anthropic's native format (content blocks array)	OpenAI chat completions format (`role`/`content` strings, `tool_calls`)
Streaming	SSE via Anthropic SDK	SSE via raw HTTP, `LineSplitter`

2. UI — Completely Different Paradigm

	Claude Code	The Agency
Interface	Terminal TUI (Ink/React in the terminal)	Flutter desktop app (macOS GUI)
Rendering	Custom terminal renderer, ANSI, Yoga layout	Flutter widgets, `shadcn_flutter`
Input	Keyboard-driven, vim mode, raw stdin	Mouse + keyboard, text fields, buttons

3. Bash Permission System — Major Gap

This is the biggest functional divergence. Claude Code's bashPermissions.ts has ~2,600 lines of sophisticated security analysis:

Tree-sitter AST parsing — parses the actual bash AST to detect injections, too-complex structure, etc.
20+ security validators — backslash-escaped operators, brace expansion, unicode whitespace, mid-word #, quoted newlines, carriage return differentials, IFS injection, zmodload/zsh dangerous commands, ANSI-C quoting obfuscation, heredoc-in-substitution, process substitution, malformed tokens, etc.
Classifier — a Haiku-based ML classifier for allow/deny/ask rules described in natural language (e.g. "don't run anything that deletes files")
Compound command splitting — splits cmd1 && cmd2 and checks each subcommand independently, with cd+git security checks
Safe wrapper stripping — timeout, nohup, nice, stdbuf stripped before rule matching
Speculative classifier — starts the AI classifier check in parallel while the permission dialog is shown

The Agency's PermissionManager is a stub by comparison — a simple string-matching check against allow/deny rules.

4. Missing Tools

Claude Code has many tools the Agency doesn't:

Tool	Claude Code	Agency
`LSPTool`	✅ (go-to-def, hover, diagnostics)	❌
`AskUserQuestionTool`	✅	❌
`NotebookEditTool`	✅ (Jupyter)	❌
`PowerShellTool`	✅	❌
`TodoWriteTool`	✅	❌
`ConfigTool`	✅	❌
`EnterPlanModeTool` / `ExitPlanModeTool`	✅	❌
`EnterWorktreeTool` / `ExitWorktreeTool`	✅	❌
`BriefTool`	✅	❌
`ListMcpResourcesTool` / `ReadMcpResourceTool`	✅	❌
`ScheduleCronTool`	✅	❌
`TaskCreate/Get/List/Update/Stop/Output`	✅ (separate tools)	Merged into `ExecuteTask`
`REPLTool`	✅	❌
`SendMessageTool`	✅	❌
`SleepTool`	✅	❌
`TeamCreateTool` / `TeamDeleteTool`	✅	❌
`ToolSearchTool`	✅	❌

5. Plan Mode / Worktree Mode

Claude Code has distinct plan mode (read-only, no writes) and worktree mode (isolated git worktrees for parallel agents). The Agency has no equivalent.

6. Agent Architecture

Claude Code has a full multi-agent swarm system:

Built-in agents: exploreAgent, planAgent, verificationAgent, generalPurposeAgent, claudeCodeGuideAgent
forkSubagent — spawns sub-agents in parallel tmux panes or in-process
Permission forwarding between leader/worker agents
Agent memory snapshots

The Agency has a simpler single-level advisor pattern (one extra model call for a second opinion).

7. Analytics / Statsig / Feature Gates

Claude Code has Statsig feature gates, GrowthBook, analytics events (logEvent) throughout. The Agency has stub analytics.

8. Migrations, Slash Commands, Voice, Vim Mode

All present in Claude Code (/commit, /review, /advisor, /brief, vim insert/normal/visual modes, voice input) — none in the Agency.

9. Bridge / Remote Control

Claude Code has a full REPL bridge for remote control (VS Code extension, web UI, etc.) with JWT auth, polling, session runners, and flush gates. The Agency has a bridge stub but it's not the same system.

Summary

The Agency has the skeleton of Claude Code (tool loop, session history, CLAUDE.md system prompt injection, hooks, MCP types), but is missing the security depth, tool breadth, agentic infrastructure, and AI-native UI conventions of the original.

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