the loop
claude-code codex-cli cursor-cli gemini-cli blog

The / loop

Reference sheets, cookbooks, and writing on the agentic coding harnesses. The sheets are re-derived weekly from the upstream docs — every section traces to a fetched source, and each sheet is also available as raw JSON.

❯ claude-codeClaude CodeTerminal-native agentic coding harness.Anthropic · v2.1.215 · verified 19 July 2026 ❯ codex-cliCodex CLIUse Codex from your terminal and scripts — OpenAI's agentic coding CLI.OpenAI · v0.144.1 · verified 11 July 2026 ❯ cursor-cliCursor CLICursor's AI coding agent, run directly from your terminal.Cursor · vJuly 20, 2026 release · verified 23 July 2026 ❯ gemini-cliGemini CLIOpen-source agent that brings Gemini models directly into your terminal.Google · v0.50.0 · verified 11 July 2026

From the blog

Claude Code /fork now spawns a background sessionClaude Code 2.1.212 changes /fork to copy the conversation into an independent background session. The forked-subagent behavior it used to have moved to a new /subtask command. Claude Code adds circuit breakers for runaway agentsClaude Code 2.1.212 caps web searches and subagent spawns at 200 per session, both tunable by environment variable, and moves MCP tool calls to the background after two minutes. Codex moved into the ChatGPT desktop appOn July 9 the Codex app merged into the ChatGPT desktop app for macOS and Windows, and the GPT-5.6 model family — Sol, Terra, and Luna — became the recommended lineup across Codex CLI and the IDE extension. Cursor CLI adds model slash shortcutsThe July 6 Cursor CLI release lets you switch models by typing shortcuts like /opus or /composer, defaults new installs to Auto routing, and gives /fast a quick toggle. Claude Code moved MCP auth to a subcommandWeek 26 adds claude mcp login and claude mcp logout, so you can authenticate a configured MCP server from the shell instead of the interactive /mcp menu. Codex CLI can web-search from inside code modeCodex CLI 0.139 lets code mode run standalone web searches and get plaintext results mid-task, and 0.138 hands a live CLI thread off to Codex Desktop with /app. Every harness put the agent on your phoneCursor, Claude Code, and Codex all shipped ways to launch, watch, or steer agents from a phone in 2026. The three take different bets on how much you do from mobile. Cursor 3.11 adds side chatsA side chat runs a parallel conversation with /side or /btw while the main agent keeps working, so a clarifying question no longer derails the run or its context.