head to head · open source
Trigger vs CodeMachine-CLI
Trigger has 16,345 GitHub stars, 1,464 forks, 342 open issues and last shipped today. CodeMachine-CLI has 2,510 stars, 238 forks, 9 open issues and last shipped 7 months ago. Trigger leads on adoption by 551% (16,345 vs 2,510 stars). Trigger is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; CodeMachine-CLI is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. Trigger has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, CodeMachine-CLI 9%. Trigger was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 4 topic tags (ai, automation, orchestration, workflow-automation), 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 | CodeMachine-CLI | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 16K | ★ 2.5K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-02-25 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.5K | ⑂ 238 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Trigger if
- You weight community size — 16K 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 CodeMachine-CLI if
- You want the CodeMachine-CLI feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and CodeMachine-CLI fits your workflow better
About Trigger
Trigger is an open source TypeScript platform for building and deploying AI agents and workflow tasks. It lives in the infrastructure, orchestration, and scheduling ecosystem, and it is positioned as a way to run long running AI tasks without typical serverless timeout constraints. The project provides a software development kit, a deployment target, and operational features such as retries, queues, observability, and elastic scaling.
read the full Trigger overview →
About CodeMachine-CLI
CodeMachine is an open source orchestration layer, written in TypeScript and released under the Apache 2.0 licence, that runs AI coding command line agents through structured, repeatable workflows for developers and teams who want long running agent work defined once and executed the same way on every project.
read the full CodeMachine-CLI overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Trigger or CodeMachine-CLI more popular?
Trigger has 16,345 GitHub stars and CodeMachine-CLI has 2,510. Trigger has the larger community by that measure.
Are Trigger and CodeMachine-CLI free?
Both are open source. Trigger is licensed under Apache-2.0 and CodeMachine-CLI under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Trigger and CodeMachine-CLI?
Trigger is written in TypeScript and CodeMachine-CLI in TypeScript. 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 CodeMachine-CLI?
Choose Trigger if you want the larger community (16,345 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose CodeMachine-CLI if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.