Amp

Why pick it

You want the most agentic agent — one that runs locally or in orbs (remote machines that keep working after you close your laptop), and that you can pick up from any device: web, terminal, or phone. Amp is Sourcegraph's bet on the frontier: it deletes old workflows and stale assumptions so you stay close to what works now.

Amp is tuned to stay responsive on the largest agent threads teams are working with today. It's not a bolt-on; it's built around the assumption that agent runs get long and you need to leave them running.

What you get

• Orbs — remote machines that keep working without supervision, even when your laptop is closed. Pick them up from any device.
• Event-driven orbs — orbs receive requests and react to outside events (new in July 2026).
• Multiplayer — invite your team to share control of an orb together.
• Scheduling — agents set their own schedules, wake themselves up, and keep working.
• Amp in Slack — summon Amp from Slack to start a task.
• Puck — meta-agent; your Amp helper for managing Amp itself.
• Plugins — hook into events, add tools, standardize policy. Deploy to your workspace. Inspired by Pi.
• Web, terminal, phone — start agents from any of the three; threads sync across all.
• Subscriptions — monthly plans, cheaper with a linked ChatGPT sub.

Why it over the others

vs Codex & Claude Code — both are terminal agents that stop when your laptop sleeps. Amp's orbs keep running in the cloud and sync to any device. Amp is also more aggressively agentic — users report it reliably produces code where CC/Codex need more steering.

vs Cursor — Cursor is a desktop editor first (inline AI, Mission Control, codebase indexing). Amp is agent-first across web/terminal/phone. Cursor is more IDE-native; Amp is more device-flexible and autonomy-forward.

vs OpenCode — OpenCode is open-source and provider-agnostic. Amp is closed-source and Sourcegraph-hosted, but offers orbs, multiplayer, and cross-device sync that OpenCode doesn't. Trade openness for infrastructure.

When it's not the right pick

• You want open-source and provider-agnostic — OpenCode.
• You want a polished IDE with inline AI — Cursor.
• You want tight OpenAI cloud-run integration — Codex's chatgpt.com/codex.

Quick start

curl -fsSL https://ampcode.com/install.sh | bash — or use it on the web with nothing to install. Sign in, start a thread, hand off a task to an orb, close your laptop.

From the team that built Sourcegraph. Ruthlessly on the frontier — when a feature stops pulling its weight, it goes.