head to head · open source
Archon vs hof
Archon has 23,823 GitHub stars, 3,520 forks, 321 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. hof has 615 stars, 48 forks, 74 open issues and last shipped 6 months ago. Archon leads on adoption by 3,774% (23,823 vs 615 stars). Archon is written in TypeScript under MIT; hof is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Archon has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, hof 8%. Archon was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (cli, workflow-engine), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| Archon | hof | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 24K | ★ 615 |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-03 | 2026-05-05 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.5K | ⑂ 48 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Archon if
- You weight community size — 24K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick hof if
- You want the hof feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and hof fits your workflow better
About Archon
Archon The first open source harness builder for AI coding. Make AI coding deterministic and repeatable. Archon is a workflow engine for AI coding agents. Define your development processes as YAML workflows planning, implementation, validation, code review, PR creation and run them reliably across all your projects. Like what Dockerfiles did for infrastructure and GitHub Actions did for CI/CD Archon does for AI coding workflows. Think n8n, but for software development. Why Archon? When you ask an AI agent to "fix this bug", what happens depends on the model's mood. It might skip planning. It might forget to run…
read the full Archon overview →
About hof
hof the higher order framework A tool that unifies data models, schemas, code generation, and a task engine. hof is a CLI tool you add to your workflow. Foundation in CUE Deterministic and Agentic code generation Data models that can evolve and be input to code generation Task engine based on cue/flow Agent servers and VS Code extension hof uses CUE to power the DX and implementation. We believe CUE is a great language for specifying schemas, configuration, and generally for writing anything declarative or this is a source of truth. It has good theory and comes from the same people that brought us containers…
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Frequently asked questions
Is Archon or hof more popular?
Archon has 23,823 GitHub stars and hof has 615. Archon has the larger community by that measure.
Are Archon and hof free?
Both are open source. Archon is licensed under MIT and hof under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Archon and hof?
Archon is written in TypeScript and hof in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Archon or hof?
Choose Archon if you want the larger community (23,823 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose hof if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.