Watchfire vs OpenHands.

• Agent backend

  OpenHands

  OpenHands is itself an agent — its own loop, with bring-your-own LLM (Anthropic, OpenAI, OpenRouter, or any LiteLLM-supported provider).

  Watchfire

  Pluggable CLI: Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, opencode, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot CLI, or Cursor Agent.

• Isolation

  OpenHands

  Runs the agent inside a Docker container that mounts your project — strong process-level isolation.

  Watchfire

  Per-task git worktree on a watchfire/<n> branch.

• Sandbox

  OpenHands

  Docker container sandbox; the agent runs as a non-root user inside the container with limited host access.

  Watchfire

  Seatbelt on macOS, Landlock or Bubblewrap on Linux; sensitive paths blocked by default.

• Parallelism

  OpenHands

  One conversation per browser session; multiple sessions are possible but each spawns its own container.

  Watchfire

  One agent per project, many projects concurrently from a single daemon.

• Git workflow

  OpenHands

  Edits files inside the container's mounted workspace; you commit and push yourself, or use the built-in GitHub issue-to-PR flow.

  Watchfire

  Reviewable branch per task on your machine; auto-merge is opt-in.

• Autonomy

  OpenHands

  Designed for high-autonomy runs — the agent plans, runs commands, browses, and iterates.

  Watchfire

  Interactive by default; autonomous opt-in via Wildfire mode.

• Local vs cloud

  OpenHands

  Self-hosted locally via Docker, or use the hosted OpenHands Cloud.

  Watchfire

  Local — nothing leaves your machine unless you ship it.

• Multi-project

  OpenHands

  Per workspace mounted into the container.

  Watchfire

  First-class — many projects active concurrently.

• Open source

  OpenHands

  MIT.

  Watchfire

  Apache-2.0.

• Pricing

  OpenHands

  Self-hosted is free; OpenHands Cloud is metered; in either case you pay your model provider.

  Watchfire

  No service fee; you pay model API costs of the CLI you pick.

When to pick OpenHands.

Pick OpenHands when you want a self-hosted, Docker-isolated agent that can do everything a Devin-style cloud agent does — edit files, run commands, browse the web — without sending your code to a vendor. The Docker container runtime is a real isolation boundary, and the browser-capable agent loop opens up tasks pure CLI agents struggle with (filling forms, scraping documentation, debugging through a browser). OpenHands is MIT-licensed, has an active research team behind it, and ships its own UI — useful when you want a Devin shape on your own infrastructure rather than an editor extension or a CLI.

Can they coexist?

Yes — they solve different problems. OpenHands is well-suited for tasks that need a browser or a full Linux container at runtime (web scraping, GUI debugging, environment exploration). Watchfire is well-suited for tasks that fit inside an agent CLI's normal toolset (file edits, shell commands, tests). A pragmatic split is to use OpenHands for browser- and environment-heavy work and Watchfire for everyday code changes. They do not share state — OpenHands writes inside its container's mounted workspace, Watchfire writes inside .watchfire/worktrees/ on its own branch.

Side by side.

The same intent expressed in each tool’s idiom.

# Spin up the agent container and open the UI
docker run -it --rm \
  -p 3000:3000 \
  -v $PWD:/opt/workspace_base \
  ghcr.io/all-hands-ai/openhands:latest

# Write the task, hand it to your CLI of choice
watchfire task add "Fix 500 on empty items[]"
watchfire run all

Related reading.

• SandboxingWhat runs locally and what's blocked from the agent.
• Worktree isolationWhy each task runs on its own branch.
• Agent modesHow Wildfire's autonomous loop works, and how to turn it off.
• See the full comparison matrixEvery adjacent tool, side by side.
• Start with a ready taskCopy-paste starter task YAMLs for the most common work.