AuravsA Amp
Comparison · Amp · agentic coding tool

Amp is unapologetically autonomous. Aura is what you check it against.

Amp is Sourcegraph’s agentic coding tool: a CLI and editor extension built around letting the model run rather than asking permission at every step, with a shared team surface and its own token economics. Aura takes the same view of autonomy and adds the counterweight — an agent allowed to run needs something other than your attention deciding whether the result is safe.

Both bet on autonomy. Aura pairs it with a gate at the commit.
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The short version

What each one is for

A

What Amp is great at

  • Letting the model work

    Amp’s design position — fewer knobs, more autonomy, always the strongest model — is a real one and it produces good results.

  • Team-shaped

    Shared threads and a team surface, rather than a purely single-player tool.

  • Sourcegraph behind it

    Code search and repository understanding are the house speciality, and it shows.

What Aura adds on top

  • A stop condition that is not you

    Autonomy without a gate means the review moves to the end, where it is most expensive. Aura checks each commit against its goal before it lands.

  • Semantic history

    What changed at the function level, why, and by which agent — kept as a record rather than a thread.

  • Every engine

    Amp is one agent. Aura drives seven, on one composer and one history, and you can switch mid-thread.

  • Open source

    Aura’s engine, CLI and extension are Apache-2.0.

Head to head

Dimension by dimension

Philosophy
AuraLet the agent run, then prove what it did.
AmpLet the agent run.
Team surface
AuraSymbol claims, collision radar, cross-branch impact alerts, shared intent log.
AmpShared threads.
Review
AuraAST diff, plain-language summaries, goal verdict.
AmpThe thread and the diff.
Licence
AuraApache-2.0.
AmpCommercial.
Capabilities

Side by side

Capability
Aura
A Amp
Autonomous agent runs
Editor extension
Team surface
Drives several engines
AST-level semantic diff
Goal ↔ commit proof verdict
Blocks unaccounted deletions
Symbol-level collision radar
Open source
Compared on public capabilities, mid-2026. ● full · − partial · ✕ none.
Honest advice

When to pick which

A

Pick Amp if…

  • You want maximum autonomy from one strong agent and are happy reviewing at the end.
  • Sourcegraph is already part of your stack.

Pick Aura if…

  • You want autonomy with a check that runs before the merge, not after the incident.
  • You need the tool to be open source.
Not either/or

Keep Amp. Add the control layer.

Install the Aura CLI in the same repository and Amp’s commits go through the intent check and the deletion guard like any others. You keep the agent you like and gain the gate.

Questions

Aura & Amp

Does Aura limit how autonomous an agent can be?

It does the opposite. A gate at the commit is what makes it reasonable to let an agent run unattended — you are not relying on watching it.

Can I use Amp as an Aura engine?

Any agent that commits in a repository Aura tracks gets the commit gate. Native composer support covers Claude Code, Gemini CLI, Codex, Cursor Agents, Kimi, OpenCode and Antigravity.

Ship with proof, not hope

Free public beta for macOS and Linux. Point it at a repo and keep driving Amp, now with a semantic diff, a verdict and a record on every change.

Try the CLI