agenttester 0.4.4

Run a prompt against multiple coding agents in parallel and compare results

AgentTester

⚠️ Experimental — This project is under active development. APIs, config format, and CLI flags may change without notice.

Send a single prompt to multiple coding agents running in parallel and compare the results. Each agent works in its own git worktree on a separate branch so they never interfere with each other.

Install

uv pip install -e ".[dev]"

Quick Start

# List built-in agents
agent-tester agents

# Run two agents on the same prompt
agent-tester run "Add unit tests for the auth module" --agents claude,aider

# Use a prompt file
agent-tester run --prompt-file task.md --agents claude,codex,aider

# Keep worktrees for manual inspection
agent-tester run "Refactor logging" --agents claude,aider --keep-worktrees

How It Works

1. You provide a prompt and select agents
2. AgentTester creates a git worktree + branch for each agent from the current HEAD
3. All agents run concurrently, each in its own worktree
4. Agent output streams to the terminal with colored prefixes
5. A markdown comparison report is generated with diff stats and timing
6. Worktrees are cleaned up (branches are preserved for git diff)

Branches are named agenttester/<run-id>/<agent-name> so you can compare results:

git diff agenttester/a3f2c1d0/claude agenttester/a3f2c1d0/aider

Configuration

Copy config.example.yaml to agent-tester.yaml (or agent-tester.yml) in your target repo to customize agents. Built-in presets are available for claude, aider, and codex.

Config file discovery

Auto-detected local config files must use a .yml or .yaml extension. The following names are checked in order:

agent-tester.yaml
agent-tester.yml
.agent-tester.yaml
.agent-tester.yml

You can also pass a config file explicitly — no extension required:

agent-tester run "Fix the bug" --agents claude --config /path/to/myconfig

A global config at ~/.config/agenttester/config.yml or ~/.config/agenttester/config.yaml is merged automatically. Local project config takes precedence over global, which takes precedence over built-in presets.

Reports

Reports are written to ~/.config/agenttester/projects/<repo-name>/ by default. You can override this per-project:

Local config (agent-tester.yaml in your repo):

reports_dir: ~/my-reports/myproject

Global config (~/.config/agenttester/config.yml), per named project:

projects:
  myproject:
    reports_dir: ~/my-reports/myproject

Local config takes priority over the global projects: setting.

Command Placeholders

• {prompt} — replaced with the shell-escaped prompt text
• {prompt_file} — replaced with a path to a temp file containing the prompt
• If neither placeholder is present, the prompt is piped to the agent via stdin

Agent Settings

Field	Description	Default
command	Shell command template	(required)
commit_style	auto (agent commits) or manual (agenttester commits)	auto
timeout	Max seconds before the agent is killed	600
env	Extra environment variables (key-value map)	{}

Skills

Skills are markdown instruction files prepended to every agent prompt. They tell agents what they are allowed to do and how to behave. AgentTester ships with four built-in skills:

Skill	Description
editing.md	Permission to read and edit files freely; look for reusable code before writing new code; prioritise readability
testing.md	Run the test suite and linter after making changes; don't mark a task complete until tests pass
git.md	Permitted git operations (branch, commit, push, pull, rebase); never push to the default branch
bash.md	Permitted bash operations scoped to code editing and testing; no system-level changes outside the worktree

Overriding or extending skills

You can override any built-in skill or add new ones at two levels:

Global (~/.config/agenttester/skills/): applies to all projects.

Local (.agent-tester/skills/ inside your repo): applies to this project only.

A skill file with the same name as a built-in replaces it entirely. New filenames add additional instructions. Skills are always output in priority order — built-ins first, global skills second, local skills last — so user-defined instructions appear closest to the prompt and carry the most weight with the model.

~/.config/agenttester/skills/testing.md   # overrides built-in testing skill globally
your-repo/.agent-tester/skills/testing.md # overrides for this project only
your-repo/.agent-tester/skills/style.md   # adds a new skill for this project

Interactive Model REPL

For comparing responses from vLLM model servers interactively, with persistent conversation history within a session:

agent-tester repl                        # auto-discovers agent-tester.yaml
agent-tester repl --config custom.yaml   # explicit config path

The REPL discovers any agent in your config whose command uses query_model.py, fans out each prompt to all of them in parallel, and maintains separate conversation history per model. Use /reset to clear history or exit to quit.

See config.example.yaml for example vLLM agent entries.

Development

uv pip install -e ".[dev]"
ruff check src/ tests/
ruff format src/ tests/
pytest

Docker

# Run against the current directory
docker compose run --rm agent-tester run "Fix the bug" --agents claude

# Run against a different repo
REPO_PATH=/path/to/repo docker compose run --rm agent-tester run "Add tests" --agents claude,aider

Library Usage

import asyncio
from pathlib import Path
from rich.console import Console
from agenttester import Orchestrator, load_config
from agenttester.config import get_reports_dir

async def main():
    repo = Path(".").resolve()
    agents = load_config()
    selected = [agents["claude"], agents["aider"]]
    orch = Orchestrator(repo, Console(), get_reports_dir(repo))
    results = await orch.run("Add unit tests", selected)
    for r in results:
        print(f"{r.agent_name}: exit={r.exit_code} duration={r.duration:.1f}s")

asyncio.run(main())