deer-workflow vs harnessrouter
Graph-engineering runtime where TypeScript owns control flow and replaceable coding-agent CLIs — Codex, Claude Code, Pi — do the semantic work inside each node. Pilot for DeerFlow 3.0. — versus — Self-hosted Apache-2.0 reference implementation of the Unified Harness Protocol: one OpenAI-Responses-style API running Codex, Claude Code, Hermes, Pi and DSH with sessions, streaming, files, traces.
deer-workflow also treats coding-agent CLIs as replaceable executors, but from inside a TypeScript graph runtime; harnessrouter exposes the same swap over HTTP for any client.
| deer-workflow | harnessrouter | |
|---|---|---|
| Stars | 533 | 1.1k |
| Forks | 55 | 112 |
| Language | TypeScript | Python |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Last activity | 1 months ago | yesterday |
| Topics | orchestration, coding | orchestration, agents, gateway |
| Curated connections | 4 | 5 |
deer-workflow — the curator's take
Pick it when the orchestration itself has to be reviewable: phases, inputs, retries and failure handling live in TypeScript you diff in a PR, not in a prompt that hopes the agent remembers the plan. The generator is the hook — `deer-workflow create "<description>"` has Codex apply the bundled workflow-creator skill and prints a runnable module you then edit as normal code, and `--print` streams one JSON event per line so CI can consume a run. Caveats worth knowing before adopting: Bun-only, requires an installed and signed-in agent CLI, ships two examples, and is explicitly a pilot for ByteDance's DeerFlow 3.0 — expect the API to move.
harnessrouter — the curator's take
Use it when your *product* needs to run coding-agent harnesses as a backend service and you don't want an integration per harness: one Docker image ships Console + Gateway + Runner, installs the harness CLIs you enable, and exposes runs/sessions/artifacts through UHP so you can swap Codex for Claude Code (or a cheaper harness×model pair — their benchmarks show 90%+ cost spread) without touching your app. Bring your own provider keys. It is a server for embedding harnesses, not a desktop cockpit for a developer (see agent-orchestrator, helmor) and not a model gateway (put litellm/omniroute underneath). Community Edition of a commercial product; check what stays in the paid tier before betting on it.