Plandex

Plandex is the open-source terminal-based AI coding agent designed specifically for handling large projects, large files, and large tasks. Released as open source, Plandex features a diff review sandbox, configurable autonomy modes (from full auto to granular step-by-step), and smart context management supporting up to 2M tokens of project context with directory indexing via tree-sitter project maps for codebases with 20M+ tokens. The project has 15.5k GitHub stars and 23 contributors. Note on current state: Plandex Cloud (the hosted commercial offering) began winding down on October 3, 2025 per the official README. The plandex.ai website returns a 404. Plandex continues as a self-hosted open-source project installed directly from GitHub. Teams evaluating Plandex should be aware they are adopting community-maintained tooling without commercial backing rather than a productized service. Pricing follows the BYOK open-source model: Plandex itself is free, with users paying only for the LLM API usage they configure. Plandex supports Claude, OpenAI GPT, and Google models, with context caching used across the board for OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google models to reduce costs and latency. Curated model packs offer different tradeoffs of capability, cost, and speed, including open source and provider-specific packs. Plandex differentiates from Aider, Claude Code, and Cursor through explicit focus on large-task handling: rather than optimizing for quick single-file edits, Plandex plans and executes multi-hour development tasks across many files, with diff review checkpoints that let developers approve incremental changes rather than reviewing massive end-state diffs. The platform supports 30+ programming languages, project-aware chat mode for fleshing out ideas before implementation, and automated debugging of terminal commands including builds, linters, tests, deployments, and browser applications via Chrome. Integration depth is limited to LLM providers and Git. Plandex connects to OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google as model providers. It operates as a terminal tool within existing Git repositories. There is no IDE plugin (VS Code integration is in development but not shipped), no MCP support, no connections to project management tools, Slack, or other collaboration platforms. Teams needing rich IDE integration or app ecosystem connections will find significant gaps compared to Cursor or OpenAI Codex. With the cloud service winding down, teams needing a stable hosted autonomous coding tool should evaluate Claude Code (from $17/mo billed annually) or Cursor (from $20/mo) instead. Plandex remains a viable self-hosted option for power users comfortable with terminal workflows who want fine-grained control over large multi-file tasks. Current state Q3 2026: Plandex is at version 2.2.1. The cloud wind-down began October 2025 and the commercial website is offline. The project remains active on GitHub with recent commits. No security certifications exist. MCP is not supported. The project is community-maintained open source.