Juggler vs OpenWork: Features, Pricing & Which Is Better (2026)

A side-by-side comparison of Juggler and OpenWork — features, pricing, and ideal use cases — to help you decide which AI tool fits your workflow.

Juggler

Julian Storer

Free

A native desktop workbench for AI coding agents with branching conversation trees, inspectable tool calls and editable context.

Branching Conversation Trees: Fork the session at any point, recursively, so competing approaches and tangents run side by side without polluting the main context.
Miller Column Navigation: A Finder-style column layout lays out tool calls, item properties and nested sub-threads for long reading and editing sessions.
Transaction Inspector: Open any model transaction to see the assembled system prompt, messages, tool definitions, output, token use, timing and stop reason.
The Context Surgeon: Fold history into a new thread, move or copy items between branches, expand a branch back into its parent, and undo structural changes.
Local or Remote Sessions: Run the desktop app locally or the headless binary on the machine holding the code, then attach from the app, a browser or a phone.
Durable Sessions: Sessions are stored on disk as live-synced Yjs documents, so quits, relaunches and dropped connections do not lose the conversation.
Automatic Context Sizing: Juggler measures the full request before each call, reserves room for the answer and compacts older history before limits become an error.
Inspectable MCP Tools: Follow an MCP handoff end to end - schema offered, arguments generated, approval, result and errors - with server status, logs and per-tool filtering.
JavaScript Extension SDK: Context items, LLM loop strategies, slash commands, viewers and Pinboard tabs are extensions you can fork or replace, under a permissive Apache-2.0 SDK.

Exploring Competing Fixes: Branch a thread into two sub-threads to try different approaches to the same bug and compare results before committing.
Auditing Agent Behavior: Inspect exactly what the model received and returned when an agent makes a surprising edit to the codebase.
Remote Development: Run the server on a dev box or GPU machine where the repository lives and drive the same live session from a laptop or browser.
Long Refactors: Keep a multi-hour session alive across quits and reconnects, with the agent paused awaiting approval for its next step.
Provider Comparison: Drive Claude Code, Codex, Copilot, Gemini and local Ollama models through one interface to compare behavior on the same task.
Custom Tooling: Write JavaScript extensions that add slash commands, file viewers or new LLM loop strategies to the workbench.

different.ai / OpenWork Labs

Free

Open-source desktop app and MCP for sharing AI workflows — an OSS alternative to Claude Cowork and Codex.

OpenWork MCP: One MCP server exposing search_capabilities and execute_capability to any compatible agent.
Cross-Agent Skill Reuse: Same skills work inside Codex, Claude Code, Cursor, ChatGPT, and other MCP clients.
Cross-Platform Desktop App: Optional macOS, Windows, and Linux workspace for people who prefer a dedicated UI.
Google Workspace + Microsoft 365 Connections: Bring shared connected services into your agent via one MCP.
Shareable Workflows: Create once, keep private, or share with coworkers and friends.
Admin Interface: For organizations — publish capabilities, manage access, configure shared connections.
Powered by opencode: Built on the open-source opencode runtime.
Fully Free and Open Source: No paid tier, no vendor lock-in.

Coding Agent Toolkit: Give Cursor or Claude Code a shared set of skills and MCPs across machines.
Team Skill Library: Publish reusable AI workflows so teammates can invoke them from their preferred agent.
OSS Alternative to Cowork: Replace closed-source workflow suites with a self-hosted OSS stack.
Personal Automation Hub: Keep private skills across ChatGPT, Codex, and Claude Code without re-authoring each time.
Enterprise Rollout: Use the admin UI to give employees curated, access-controlled AI capabilities.
Connecting Google/Microsoft to Agents: Reuse one Workspace/365 connection across every agentic client.