Task Machine vs OpenHands

OpenHands combines a coding agent, Agent Canvas, Cloud and a Python SDK. Task Machine organizes work as Tasks and Goals with plans, acceptance checks and an Inbox for decisions.

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Task Machine and OpenHands, point by point

Built from each company's public pages. Every answer links to its source and shows when we last checked it. The oldest check on this page was November 13, 2026.

Task Machine and OpenHands compared, with the source and check date of each answer
What you compare Task Machine OpenHands
Goals Task Machine Yes

Give a Goal an agent lead and link Metrics, such as weekly signups or open pipeline value. The lead sees each Metric's latest value and trend, reviews the Goal on its own when a number or the linked work changes and on a schedule, and proposes what is missing for you to approve.

taskmachine.io/docs/goals
OpenHands Partly

Canvas runs an objective through an agent and a judge until completion or an iteration limit. Its docs describe completion scores rather than an owned goal with a tracked metric or target.

Leads Task Machine Yes

Goals, Projects and Teams each have a lead, a person or an agent. A Goal lead checks that the work can still reach the outcome. A Project lead reviews its Tasks against the Goals that direct it and asks you to settle conflicts between them. A Team lead triages the queue. Every gap becomes a proposal you approve.

OpenHands Partly

The daily-work agent prioritizes development work and dispatches separate agents, while factory triage checks issue dependencies. Its docs describe these workflows rather than named lead roles over projects, goals or teams.

Tasks Task Machine Yes

Every job is a Task that a person or an agent owns. The Task keeps its plan, discussion, decisions, runs and history together, so you can steer one job in detail without reading a chat log, and people and agents hand work to each other on the same record.

taskmachine.io/docs/tasks
OpenHands Partly

Conversations retain their own history and agent configuration, and the daily workflow gathers assigned GitHub issues. Its docs do not establish a shared work record that either a person or an agent can own.

Recurring work Task Machine Yes

Start a Task or Workflow once, on a schedule in your timezone, or when a service event arrives, such as a paid invoice or a pull request review. A recurring job keeps one stable root Task and gives each occurrence its own status and history, so repeated work does not flood your board.

OpenHands Yes

Canvas automations run on schedules or matching webhook and service events. The Automate view shows their configuration, recent run history and status.

Workflows Task Machine Yes

A Workflow repeats your steps in the same order every time, with branches, human questions and approvals, and verifier checks that judge each result against its requirements and send weak work back with feedback. Every run keeps a step-by-step history you can read afterwards.

taskmachine.io/docs/workflow-builder
OpenHands Yes

The software factory defines triage, development, independent review and conditional merge as four automations. Script automations can execute a saved bundle directly instead of starting an agent conversation.

Autonomy Task Machine Yes

Consequential decisions land in your Inbox with their context. You set what each agent may do on its own: every action is either Ask first or Automatic, per agent, and you can change that whenever the work or the stakes change.

OpenHands Yes

SDK confirmation policies require approval for all actions, risky actions or none. Pending actions are collected for confirmation and can be rejected with feedback through a custom confirmation handler.

docs.openhands.dev/…/security.md
Learned autonomy Task Machine Yes

Task Machine studies the approvals and corrections you already make. When an agent does well it proposes giving it more freedom, and when it needs closer supervision it proposes tighter review, each with the evidence. A short lucky streak is not enough, and nothing changes until you accept.

OpenHands Not published

Its public docs describe configured confirmation policies and feedback-led skill improvement. They do not describe proposing permission changes from your approval history.

Memory Task Machine Yes

Agents keep lessons from your corrections, such as an accepted example or a mistake to avoid, and carry the relevant notes into later work. Memory is kept per agent, project, goal, team and workspace, and you can read, correct and restore any note.

taskmachine.io/docs/memories
OpenHands Yes

Opt-in persistent memory stores agent-maintained user and project notes in Markdown files loaded into later conversations. You can review, edit or delete those files.

Planning Task Machine Yes

Plan in Chat with your agents, and the plan becomes Tasks or Library documents instead of staying in a chat log. Before an agent starts, you review its plan and the acceptance criteria its work will be judged against.

taskmachine.io/docs/planning-in-chat
OpenHands Yes

The daily-work guide has you discuss a failing check, ask for a proposed fix and approve its plan before implementation. That review boundary is expressed through conversation instructions.

Intake Task Machine Yes

Send work in over HTTP with a project token. It lands in the project as a Task, or in your Inbox as a proposal first. A team lead agent triages it to the right owner and asks you only when the decision is yours.

OpenHands Yes

Signed webhook payloads are routed to automations by event name and optional filters, then added to the agent's prompt. Automations can select an Agent Profile on supporting backends.

Connectors Task Machine Yes

Install services from a catalog as MCP servers, APIs or command-line tools, or add your own custom Connector for any of the three. Events Connectors receive webhooks from a service, such as a paid invoice, and start Workflows or wake a waiting Task.

taskmachine.io/docs/connectors
OpenHands Yes

Canvas connects MCP servers for external tools and data, while custom webhook sources accept HTTP payloads and trigger matching automations. Some service signature formats need a validating relay.

Models Task Machine Yes

Auto is the default. For each stage of the work it chooses a model from the task, current model capabilities, pricing and your applicable budgets, and you can fix a specific model on an agent when you want to.

taskmachine.io/docs/agents
OpenHands Yes

The SDK's optional task-routing tool uses a classifier model to select a saved model profile from the current conversation. The agent decides when to request a switch, and routing configuration defines the candidates.

Cloud or your own computer Task Machine Yes

Run agents in Managed Cloud with nothing to install, or connect a Local Worker, a computer you control, for local files, tools and accounts. You choose where each agent runs.

OpenHands Yes

Canvas can connect to a backend on your machine, in Docker, on a virtual machine or in managed OpenHands Cloud. You choose the execution environment and the workspace it can access.

docs.openhands.dev/…/overview.md
Your own subscription Task Machine Yes

Sign in to your ChatGPT (Codex), Claude or GitHub Copilot subscription on a Local Worker, and the agents there use it instead of Task Machine's models.

OpenHands Yes

Canvas accepts provider API keys and can reuse a signed-in ACP agent subscription when the backend shares its machine. The SDK also documents ChatGPT Plus or Pro access to Codex models.

Pricing Task Machine Yes

Usage based. From $29 a month before tax, the whole payment becomes usage that your workspace shares across people and agents, with no base fee and no trial. Larger monthly amounts lower the AI and Cloud rates.

taskmachine.io/pricing
OpenHands Yes

Cloud model usage uses credits. Canvas is free to self-host. Self-hosted Teams costs $500/month for up to 10 users, plus $50/month per additional seat, with a 5,000-session monthly cap. Enterprise has custom pricing.

Correctness Task Machine Yes

Every Task carries acceptance requirements, and each one gets a Pass, Fail or Uncertain check against the delivered work before a person reviews it. Workflow steps can add a verifier check that sends failed work back with feedback. You review the plan first, so the criteria exist before work starts.

OpenHands Yes

Goal runs use a judge to check completion and send missing work back to the agent. The software factory establishes acceptance criteria, runs relevant tests and requires passing independent statuses for the exact revision before merging.

For software work

Task Machine and OpenHands compared, with the source and check date of each answer
What you compare Task Machine OpenHands
Code review rules Task Machine Yes

Internal code review checks completed changes against the enabled rules of your repository. Rule discovery reads the repository and proposes rules, each screened against violating and valid examples first, and Task Machine suggests turning off a rule that agents keep dismissing.

taskmachine.io/docs/repositories
OpenHands Yes

You can add repository-specific review rules as a skill that runs alongside the default code-review framework. The documented example covers approval decisions, lint conventions and test locations.

docs.openhands.dev/…/code-review.md
Adversarial review Task Machine Yes

When an approved plan has high sensitivity or a Critical review level, the change also gets an adversarial review. Two independent reviewers examine the changed files together for defects such as a broken caller or a duplicate charge on retry. Findings keep their reproduction steps, and a skipped or failed review never counts as a pass.

taskmachine.io/docs/task-reviews
OpenHands Yes

The software factory uses an independent reviewer with a separate token that cannot push code. It reviews and tests the exact pull-request revision, and the watchdog requires current independent acceptance before merge.

Risk rating Task Machine Yes

Before final review, Merge risk rates the exact revision Low, Moderate or High, with notes on alignment, impact, verification, rollback cost and error detection, plus file references. It informs your decision and never merges for you.

taskmachine.io/docs/pull-requests
OpenHands Partly

The SDK rates individual actions LOW, MEDIUM, HIGH or UNKNOWN before execution. Its docs describe action security ratings rather than a risk rating of the whole change before merge.

Pull requests Task Machine Yes

Agents deliver against the exact reported revision, address review feedback and update the branch under your repository rules. Task Machine records its own approval of the exact commit before an agent may merge.

taskmachine.io/docs/pull-requests
OpenHands Yes

Factory agents turn GitHub issues into pull requests, receive native reviews and revise failed changes. A changed commit needs fresh acceptance, and the watchdog can merge once its required checks pass.

A fact we cannot find or cannot check is left out, and prices can change after the date shown. Task Machine publishes this comparison and is an interested party. OpenHands is named only to identify it, and there is no relationship between the two companies. Has something changed? Tell us.

Who each one suits

OpenHands suits you if you want a coding agent with a self-hosted browser console, scheduled engineering automations and a Python SDK for building your own agents.

Task Machine suits you if you want people and agents to own Tasks, link work to Goals with Metrics and bring decisions into an Inbox with their context.

You may stay with OpenHands if its repository-centered work already fits your team. Its software factory combines issue triage, implementation, independent review and tests before conditional merge.

Organize engineering work or shared Tasks

OpenHands Agent Canvas organizes work as conversations and automations. Its daily-work guide gathers GitHub and Slack activity, prioritizes it and lets you approve a plan before implementation or dispatch another agent for independent work. The Software Agent SDK is a Python library for building agents that work with code.

Task Machine gives a job a Task with a person or agent owner, plan, discussion and history. Goals link that work to Metrics and a lead who reviews progress. You can use it for software delivery and other work without making a repository conversation the work record.

Check work before merging

OpenHands documents a software factory with four automations for triage, development, review and delivery. The reviewer follows repository guidance and tests the exact proposed revision. Failed checks lead to revisions and fresh acceptance before the watchdog merges. Its goal loop also asks a judge to identify missing work and sends that feedback back to the agent.

Task Machine checks delivered work against each Task's acceptance requirements before a person reviews it. Workflows can add verifier checks that send failed work back with feedback. Both products publish result checks, so the choice is about how you define and review the work rather than whether an agent can test its output.

What the prices cover

OpenHands lists Agent Canvas as free, MIT-licensed software to self-host with your own model key. Self-hosted Teams costs $500 a month for up to 10 users, with $50 a month per additional seat and a cap of 5,000 sessions a month. Enterprise has custom pricing. Managed Cloud is a separate service, and its documentation describes credits for OpenHands-provider model usage. The public pricing page does not give a managed Cloud plan amount.

Task Machine is usage based, from $29 a month before tax. The whole payment becomes usage shared by the workspace, with no base fee. You keep 100% of your revenue, Task Machine takes no cut and never takes custody of your accounts.

Common questions

Can both run on my own computer?
Yes. OpenHands supports local and self-hosted backends as well as managed Cloud. Task Machine offers Managed Cloud or a Local Worker on a computer you control.

Can OpenHands use my existing model account?
Yes. Canvas accepts provider API keys and can reuse a signed-in ACP agent on the backend's machine. Its SDK also documents ChatGPT Plus or Pro access to Codex models.

Does OpenHands support independent code review?
Yes. Its software factory separates implementation from a reviewer that cannot push code, then requires passing independent acceptance statuses before merge.

Does OpenHands select models automatically?
Its SDK offers an optional task-routing tool that asks a classifier to choose a saved profile. The agent invokes the tool when it wants a switch. Task Machine's Auto model choice selects a model for each stage of work.