head to head · open source
Trigger vs cli-agent-orchestrator
Trigger has 16,706 GitHub stars, 1,522 forks, 342 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. cli-agent-orchestrator has 1,510 stars, 313 forks, 151 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Trigger leads on adoption by 1,006% (16,706 vs 1,510 stars). Trigger is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; cli-agent-orchestrator is written in Python under Apache-2.0. Trigger has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, cli-agent-orchestrator 21%. cli-agent-orchestrator was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (ai-agents), 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
| Trigger | cli-agent-orchestrator | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 17K | ★ 1.5K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-03 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.5K | ⑂ 313 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Trigger if
- You weight community size — 17K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick cli-agent-orchestrator if
- You want the cli-agent-orchestrator feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and cli-agent-orchestrator fits your workflow better
About Trigger
Build and deploy fully‑managed AI agents and workflows Website Docs Issues Example projects Feature requests Public roadmap Self hosting About Trigger.dev Trigger.dev is the open source platform for building AI workflows in TypeScript. Long running tasks with retries, queues, observability, and elastic scaling. The platform designed for building AI agents Build AI agents using all the frameworks, services and LLMs you're used to, deploy them to Trigger.dev and get durable, long running tasks with retries, queues, observability, and elastic scaling out of the box. Long running without timeouts : Execute your…
read the full Trigger overview →
About cli-agent-orchestrator
CLI Agent Orchestrator (CAO) English 简体中文 CLI Agent Orchestrator (CAO) coordinates multiple AI coding CLIs so a supervisor can delegate work to specialist agents in parallel or sequence. 📚 Documentation — guides, reference, and two interactive courses. What CAO does CAO runs a local cao server , starts provider CLIs in isolated terminal sessions, and gives a supervisor tools for coordinating workers. The agents remain full CLI processes with their native authentication and capabilities. See CODEBASE.md for the runtime architecture and package layout. Prerequisites Install: Python 3.10 or later tmux 3.3 or later…
read the full cli-agent-orchestrator overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Trigger or cli-agent-orchestrator more popular?
Trigger has 16,706 GitHub stars and cli-agent-orchestrator has 1,510. Trigger has the larger community by that measure.
Are Trigger and cli-agent-orchestrator free?
Both are open source. Trigger is licensed under Apache-2.0 and cli-agent-orchestrator under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Trigger and cli-agent-orchestrator?
Trigger is written in TypeScript and cli-agent-orchestrator in Python. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Trigger or cli-agent-orchestrator?
Choose Trigger if you want the larger community (16,706 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose cli-agent-orchestrator if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.