The open-source coding agent you can walk away from
Agent AFK is an open-source (Apache-2.0), local-first runtime for running coding agents unattended: start a task, walk away, and come back to a verified receipt. It builds the feature, verifies its own work, and texts you when it's done — with a receipt of every step, every decision, and what's waiting on your input. If it's unsure, it stops and asks instead of guessing its way through your codebase.
The safety design is what separates it from "just run Claude in a loop": permission boundaries, reversibility gates, isolated worktrees, parallel sub-agents, adversarial verification and persistent session memory. It's compatible with Claude, Cursor, Claude Code, Codex and custom agents, while the runtime and data stay on your own device. Install is npm install -g agent-afk on Node 20+.
Who it's for: developers who want overnight or away-from-keyboard agent runs without the 3am "why did it delete my migrations" moment. The receipt-and-ask design is the honest answer to the trust problem everyone else hand-waves. Free and open source — the cost of trying it is one npm install.
What it is
The open-source coding agent you can walk away from
Pricing
Free
Primary category
Developer Tools
Source code
Closed source / hosted
Agent AFK is one of many tools in its category. Before committing to it, weigh a few practical points that tend to decide whether a tool actually fits your work:
We describe Agent AFK and its alternatives honestly so you can compare on substance. Browse the similar tools below to see how it stacks up against other options in the same category.
