Amp vs OpenCode

Overview

Amp is a coding agent and development environment built for frontier models. Instead of keeping one chat in one editor, Amp gives every agent its own orb — an isolated environment that keeps working after you close your laptop. You can start a task, walk away, and check on it from the web or your phone while it continues in the background.

The product is aimed at developers who run several agents at once and want to stop juggling worktrees, terminals and browser tabs. Amp describes the shift as "juggle less, ship more": you direct a team of agents, share threads with teammates, and pick work back up from any device.

What Amp provides

• Orbs — always-on environments for agents. Each orb can run commands, edit code and keep state, and agents inside them continue after your local machine disconnects.
• Remote control — run amp --no-tui on servers, CI runners or any shell, then watch and steer those agents from the web UI or your phone.
• Threads and spaces — long-running conversations grouped into spaces so multiple agents and teammates can work on the same project without stepping on each other.
• Automations — agents can schedule themselves to wake up, check production metrics, compare canary results and report back without a human prompt.
• Production access with OIDC — orbs can be granted (and revoked) access to production systems such as Google Cloud, so an agent can read logs or verify a rollout.
• Team features — service accounts for threads that belong to the team rather than one person, plus sharing so colleagues can follow or take over work.
• Git hosting integrations — connect github.com, gitlab.com or a self-hosted GitLab instance; Amp can also host a repository for a new project and clone it with amp clone.
• Portals — open what an agent built on a remote runner directly from your browser, even when the code is not on your machine.
• Boxes — always-on computers for the things you build with Amp.

How people use it

Typical workflows include handing off a bug report and letting the agent reproduce, patch and test it; running performance rollouts where an agent watches dashboards and confirms a fleet-wide win; reviewing a diff and asking follow-up questions in the same thread; and letting an agent fix its own tooling or documentation when it hits a bad error message.

Amp is model-agnostic in practice — the agent can be pointed at different frontier models — and it exposes the same threads across the desktop app, CLI, web and mobile, so a task can start on one surface and finish on another.

Getting started

1. Create an account at ampcode.com and install the CLI or desktop app.
2. Run amp in a project directory, or use amp --no-tui on a remote machine.
3. Describe the task; the agent plans, edits files, runs commands and reports back.
4. Use the web or mobile view to steer long-running orbs, or open a portal to preview what was built.
5. For team work, move persistent threads into a space and use service accounts where the work should outlive an individual.

Pricing

Amp offers a free tier with limited daily usage plus paid credit plans for heavier agent use; team and enterprise options add shared spaces, service accounts and centralized billing. Check ampcode.com for current limits.

Links

• Website: ampcode.com
• Docs: ampcode.com/docs
• CLI remote control: ampcode.com/docs/cli/remote-control
• Changelog: ampcode.com/chronicle

The open source AI coding agent.

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Installation

## YOLO
curl -fsSL https://opencode.ai/v2/install | bash

## Package managers
npm i -g @opencode/cli@latest      # or bun/pnpm/yarn
brew install anomalyco/tap/opencode-v2 # macOS and Linux (recommended, always up to date)
brew install opencode              # macOS and Linux (official brew formula, updated less)
sudo pacman -S opencode            # Arch Linux (Stable)
paru -S opencode-beta              # Arch Linux (Latest from AUR)
mise use -g opencode               # Any OS
nix run github:anomalyco/opencode  # Nix

[!TIP]
Remove versions older than 0.1.x before installing.

Desktop App (BETA)

OpenCode is also available as a desktop application. Download it from opencode.ai/download.

## macOS (Homebrew)
brew install --cask opencode-desktop

Installation Directory

The install script installs OpenCode to $HOME/.opencode/bin.

Agents

OpenCode includes two built-in agents you can switch between with the Tab key.

• build - Default, full-access agent for development work
• plan - Read-only agent for analysis and code exploration
  • Denies file edits by default
  • Asks permission before running bash commands
  • Ideal for exploring unfamiliar codebases or planning changes

Also included is a general subagent for complex searches and multistep tasks.
This is used internally and can be invoked using @general in messages.

Learn more about agents.

Documentation

For more info on how to configure OpenCode, head over to our docs.

Contributing

If you're interested in contributing to OpenCode, please read our contributing docs before submitting a pull request.

Building on OpenCode

If you are working on a project that's related to OpenCode and is using "opencode" as part of its name, for example "opencode-dashboard" or "opencode-mobile", please add a note to your README to clarify that it is not built by the OpenCode team and is not affiliated with us in any way.

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