Cursor is an AI-native IDE. agentty is for developers who'd rather stay in the terminal (and their existing editor) than adopt a new IDE fork.
Why look for a Cursor alternative
- You don't want to switch to a forked editor — you like your current setup (Neovim, Zed, Emacs, VS Code).
- You want an open-source, self-hostable agent.
- You want provider choice and the option to run fully local models via Ollama.
How agentty compares
- Terminal-first, editor-agnostic. Use it standalone, or inside Zed over ACP.
- Single native binary — millisecond startup, no Electron, no Node.
- Multi-provider — Claude, OpenAI, Groq, OpenRouter, Cerebras, Ollama.
- Sandboxed by default, SSH air-gap in one command.
- Open source (MIT).
When to keep Cursor
If you want a graphical, all-in-one AI IDE with inline multi-file editing UX, Cursor is excellent. If you want a fast, open, terminal-native agent that doesn't replace your editor, choose agentty.
Install in one line
curl -fsSL https://agentty.org/install.sh | sh