OpenHands
Open-source software engineering agent for code, files, and terminals.
Open source
Best when you want an open-source coding agent that can read codebases, write patches, run commands, and operate in a sandboxed environment.
Selection advice
Choose OpenHands when you need a self-hosted coding agent that operates as a standalone tool, not an IDE plugin. It's the agent-as-tool pattern for software engineering.
Best for
- coding agents
- PR generation
- codebase exploration
Not ideal for
- teams that prefer IDE-integrated assistants
- non-engineering agent use cases
Core concepts
code agentsandboxshellfile editing
Minimal implementation shape
Give OpenHands access to a repo, describe the change you want in natural language, and let it read files, write patches, and run tests in its own sandbox.