CmdBrief vs opcode (Claudia): which Mac GUI?

The short answer

Pick opcode when you want a free, open-source Claude Code GUI you can read, fork and change. It is AGPL-3.0, it runs Claude Code and nothing else, and it brings three things CmdBrief does not ship: a checkpoint timeline you can rewind, CLAUDE.md management that finds every one in your projects, and a Claude API cost dashboard broken down by model, project and date. You need to be comfortable with a release dated 2025-08-31, or with building it yourself from Rust and Bun.

Pick CmdBrief when Claude Code is one of several agent CLIs you pay for, and the thing you are trying to keep straight is not a session but a product: its repos, its tasks, its terminals, its staging site, and how much of this week’s provider allowance it has eaten. Apple silicon, macOS 26+, one paid plan, no free tier.

Running both costs nothing but disk. opcode reads ~/.claude/projects/ and CmdBrief reads ordinary checkouts, so neither takes anything from the other. If you only run Claude Code, though, start with Anthropic’s own desktop app — the Claude Code GUI for Mac guide is blunt about that, and so is CmdBrief vs Claude Desktop.

The data behind this comparison

Every value here comes from opcode’s own feed or documentation, linked beside it. Version, release date and licence refresh automatically from the vendor’s feed; pricing, platform support and the verdicts below are read by a person and dated. Data checked 2026-09-29.

What opcode is for

From opcode’s README, its site and its v0.2.0 release, read on 2026-09-29:

• A visual home for Claude Code sessions. “Visual Project Browser: Navigate through all your Claude Code projects in ~/.claude/projects/”, with session history, search, and first-message and timestamp metadata at a glance. It reads the directory Claude Code already writes, so there is nothing to import.
• CC Agents. Custom agents with their own system prompts and permissions, kept in a library, run in background processes so the UI stays responsive, with an execution history that logs every run.
• A usage analytics dashboard. Cost tracking for Claude API usage, token analytics broken down by model, project and time period, charts, and an export. This is a real capability and CmdBrief does not have its equivalent: CmdBrief shows provider windows, not per-model spend.
• Timeline and checkpoints. Checkpoints at any point in a session, a branching timeline, one-click restore, forks from a checkpoint, and a diff viewer that shows “exactly what changed between checkpoints”.
• CLAUDE.md management. A built-in editor with live preview, a project scanner that finds every CLAUDE.md, and syntax highlighting.
• MCP server management. A central registry UI, config import from Claude Desktop, and connection testing before use.
• Free, AGPL-3.0, and yours to change. Built with Tauri 2 — a Rust core with a web frontend — and the README is explicit that it “is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Anthropic”.

That is a coherent product with a clear buyer: someone who lives in Claude Code, wants the session history visible, and wants to see what it costs.

A note on maintenance

This is the part most comparisons skip, so here is the evidence rather than the conclusion. Every figure below came from GitHub’s own API on 2026-09-29.

• Two releases have ever been published: v0.1.0 on 2025-08-15 and v0.2.0 on 2025-08-31. There has been no newer release for thirteen months.
• One commit has landed since 2025-11-01 — d1ca30a, on 2026-09-18, with the message “Remove image from README.md”. The most recent commits that touch code are from October 2025.
• 332 issues are open, against 22,412 stars and 1,719 forks.
• The README and the releases disagree. The Installation section still reads “Release Executables Will Be Published Soon” and sends you to build from source with Rust and Bun, while the releases page has shipped signed binaries since August 2025.
• No Windows binary exists, although the README’s system requirements list Windows 10/11. v0.2.0 published a macOS universal disk image, a macOS .app.tar.gz, a Linux AppImage, a Linux .deb and source tarballs, each with a .sha256.

What that does not say: the repository is not archived, it is not marked as disabled, and there is no discontinuation notice anywhere on the site or in the README. The dormancy is an inference from the commit and release history, not a statement anyone has made. Check the repository yourself before you conclude anything from it — a project with 22,000 stars can wake up.

What it does mean practically: an AGPL client you can fork is a different kind of risk from a closed one. If Claude Code changes the shape of ~/.claude/projects/ and nobody merges the fix, you can merge it. That is the honest form of the argument for choosing opcode anyway.

What CmdBrief is for

CmdBrief is a native Rust macOS app for the founder running several products. Each product gets a persistent workspace: agents, tasks, terminals, files, a diff viewer, and browser panes, with saved layouts that come back the way you left them. The sidebar rolls attention up across all of them.

It supervises Claude Code, Codex, Grok CLI, Kimi CLI, OpenCode, and Cursor CLI with the same working / needs-action / completed / failed states, and shows each vendor’s usage windows side by side where the provider reports them (Claude Code 5-hour and weekly, Codex weekly, Grok CLI weekly credits, OpenCode Go rolling / weekly / monthly, Cursor CLI monthly Cursor-models and Other-models pools; Kimi CLI exposes none). Session resume lists local threads across those CLIs.

In the Standard view, Claude Code, Codex, Grok CLI and OpenCode run as agent panes that draw the conversation, edits and questions instead of a terminal. A lead agent (Claude Code or Codex) can start a crew of Claude Code, Codex and OpenCode agents in one tab, each on a Core, Standard or Light tier of model and effort, with progress counted in plan steps and the questions that need you in one Needs you list.

The terminal is a hand-written VT emulator with a GPU text path, and the browser panes are embedded macOS webviews, so the staging site you check after every deploy lives in the product rather than in a browser window you lose.

Constraints that are real: Apple silicon, macOS 26+, local-first, generally available since 2026-08-06. One plan, CmdBrief Pro, display prices €29.99/mo or €299.90/yr, 14-day money-back, no free trial. It gives a lead’s code builders their own git worktrees when several share a repo; for sessions you open yourself, pair it with claude --worktree if you need isolated checkouts. It does not resell agent provider plans.

Where they overlap

Less than the category suggests. Both are desktop apps with a Rust core that put Claude Code sessions in front of you instead of leaving them in scrollback, both read local Claude state rather than a cloud copy, and both show you a diff.

After that they diverge on the first axis that matters: opcode is a client for one vendor’s CLI, and it goes deeper on that CLI than CmdBrief does — checkpoints, a CLAUDE.md editor, MCP server management, per-model cost analytics. CmdBrief is a supervision layer over six CLIs from six vendors, and it goes wider instead.

One row deserves care rather than a chip. opcode’s dashboard does show Claude usage — as API cost and token counts by model, project and date. That is not the same thing as a plan window with a reset time, which is what CmdBrief means by a usage window, so the matrix marks it “partial” and this sentence explains why. If what you want is “how much have I spent”, opcode answers it and CmdBrief does not.

What opcode does that CmdBrief does not

• It is free and AGPL-3.0. You can read it, fork it, patch it, and ship your patch. CmdBrief is one paid plan with no free tier, and it is not open source.
• Checkpoints and a branching timeline, with one-click restore and forks from any point. CmdBrief has no checkpoint system.
• Claude API cost and token analytics by model, project and date, with an export. CmdBrief shows provider usage windows and token history by agent and workspace, not spend.
• A CLAUDE.md editor with live preview, and a scanner that finds every CLAUDE.md in your projects. CmdBrief’s Markdown editor opens a CLAUDE.md with Edit and Preview tabs, but does not find them for you.
• MCP server management from a UI, including importing an existing Claude Desktop configuration.
• Linux binaries, and Windows and Linux in the stated system requirements. CmdBrief is Apple silicon on macOS 26+ only.

What CmdBrief does that opcode does not

Documented on CmdBrief’s site; not documented on the opcode pages we read on 2026-09-29:

• Five more agent vendors. Codex, Grok CLI, Kimi CLI, OpenCode and Cursor CLI, supervised with the same states as Claude Code. opcode drives Claude Code and names no other CLI, so a Codex thread in the same repository is invisible to it.
• Provider usage windows from several vendors side by side, with reset times, where the provider reports them. If you want that story in depth, Claude Code usage limits is the guide.
• A persistent workspace per product, not per Claude project directory: repos, tasks with acceptance criteria, terminals, diffs, browser panes and saved layouts, restored together.
• Attention rolled up across products, so a blocked agent in a product you are not looking at cannot disappear. opcode documents an execution history per agent run; we found no cross-project attention state, so that row is a dash rather than a no.
• A real terminal and embedded browser panes in the same window as the agent that needs them.
• A release this month. CmdBrief has shipped continuously since 2026-08-06.

CmdBrief does not ship checkpoints, a CLAUDE.md scanner, MCP server management or cost analytics. Do not expect it to.

Who should pick which

Choose opcode if Claude Code is your whole stack, a free and forkable client matters more than a maintained one, and the features you want are the Claude-specific ones: checkpoints, cost analytics, CLAUDE.md editing. Budget the time to build from source if the August 2025 binary does not run on your machine.

Choose CmdBrief if you operate several products across several agent vendors, and the question you cannot answer from a session list is which product is blocked and which provider window is about to run out.

Skip CmdBrief if you are on Windows or Linux, on an Intel Mac, or on macOS before 26; if Claude Code is the only CLI you run; or if a free tier is a hard requirement. For a free, cross-platform alternative in the same shape that ships several releases a month, CmdBrief vs Emdash is the page to read next; if your day is many parallel attempts against one repository, read CmdBrief vs Conductor instead. The full set is on the compare hub.

Primary sources

Provider terms and product behavior can change. Confirm plan, pricing, model, and permission details in the current official documentation.

• 01opcode READMEgithub.com
• 02opcodeopcode.sh
• 03opcode releasesgithub.com
• 04opcode v0.2.0 release assetsgithub.com
• 05Homebrew cask “opcode”formulae.brew.sh
• 06CmdBrief featurescmdbrief.com
• 07Claude Code GUI for Maccmdbrief.com