AI tool comparison
dotclaude vs Kampala
Which one should you ship with? Here is the side-by-side panel verdict, pricing read, reviewer split, and community vote comparison.
Developer Tools
dotclaude
Run multiple AI coding agents in parallel tmux panes — no extra API costs
50%
Panel ship
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Community
Free
Entry
dotclaude is a lightweight workflow pattern (not a framework) for running multiple AI coding agents in parallel without incurring extra API costs. It exploits the CLI non-interactive resume mode of Claude, Codex, and Gemini — spinning them up in tmux panes and letting them iterate on different aspects of a codebase simultaneously. The project is explicitly positioned as a "practical workflow, not a polished framework." The core insight is that you can achieve multi-agent collaboration by composing existing CLI tools (tmux, agent CLIs, shell scripts) rather than building or buying dedicated orchestration infrastructure. Context is shared via files; agents communicate by reading and writing to the same working directory. It's rough around the edges and requires comfort with the command line, but the approach is genuinely clever: no new dependencies, no framework lock-in, and no extra API tokens beyond what you'd spend running each agent individually. The HN thread attracted developers interested in the minimal-overhead angle, particularly those already running multiple coding agents manually.
Developer Tools
Kampala
MITM proxy that reverse-engineers any app into a stable, callable API
75%
Panel ship
—
Community
Free
Entry
Kampala, built by Zatanna AI (YC W26), is a macOS proxy tool that sits between your applications and the internet, intercepts every HTTP/HTTPS request, and automatically reverse-engineers the underlying API. It traces authentication chains — tracking tokens, cookies, and session state — and replays flows on demand, preserving original TLS fingerprints so services can't distinguish API calls from the real app. The key insight is that almost every app that lacks a public API still has a private one — and it's usually more stable than the UI. Kampala targets automation engineers, QA teams, and AI agent builders who need reliable machine-readable access to apps that haven't opened their APIs. Setup is a local MITM cert install; no cloud proxy involved. Currently macOS-only with a Windows waitlist. The team emerged from YC's Winter 2026 batch with backing from Y Combinator. Pricing is in early access, with a free tier planned for solo developers and paid plans for teams building production automations.
Reviewer scorecard
“This is the kind of DIY cleverness that eventually becomes best practice. Using tmux + CLI resume mode to approximate multi-agent coordination is a zero-dependency solution that works with the tools most developers already have. Rough but real.”
“This is the tool I've been building in-house at three different companies and never had time to productize properly. The auth chain tracing alone — tracking token refresh flows and session state automatically — would have saved me hundreds of hours. If it works as advertised, it's an instant ship for anyone doing integration work.”
“File-based agent communication breaks down fast when agents make conflicting edits. There's no conflict resolution, no proper state management, and no error recovery. This is a proof-of-concept that will frustrate you on any non-trivial project.”
“Terms of service violations are a real concern here. Most apps explicitly prohibit automated access through their private APIs, and companies like LinkedIn and Instagram have sued over exactly this pattern. The MITM cert requirement also opens a broad attack surface. Wait for a clearer legal stance before building production systems on this.”
“The fact that developers are jury-rigging multi-agent coordination with tmux and shell scripts shows how strong the demand is for parallel AI workflows. The gap between what people want and what polished frameworks offer is still wide enough for creative workarounds like this to get traction.”
“The long-term story here is about AI agents needing reliable access to every app humans use. We can't wait for every SaaS to ship an official API. Tools like Kampala are how AI agents will integrate with the existing software ecosystem for the next five years, until MCP-style universal interfaces catch up.”
“This requires serious CLI comfort and debugging patience. For creative workflows that involve coding, the productivity cost of managing tmux sessions and debugging agent conflicts outweighs the benefits for most people.”
“For social media automation and cross-platform content workflows this is a game-changer. Building automations for platforms with limited or expensive APIs has always required fragile browser scraping — having a stable API layer extracted from the real app traffic is a much better foundation.”
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