KeelenCompare — Keelen vs Cursor
Cursor is where you code. Keelen is what codes without you.
Cursor is an AI-first code editor — leverage for the hours your hands are on the keyboard. Keelen is not an editor at all. It is an autonomous coding loop that works your roadmap when you are not at the keyboard: it plans tasks with acceptance criteria, implements them in isolated single-use VMs on your own Claude, Codex, GLM, or Kimi credentials, verifies every change through test and review gates, and ships merged pull requests. Keep your editor; add a loop.
Keelen is an autonomous coding loop: an AI development team that runs against your GitHub repository around the clock. It turns free-form requests into a prioritized roadmap, breaks roadmap items into dev-ready tasks with acceptance criteria, implements each task in an isolated single-use VM using your own Claude, Codex, GLM, or Kimi credentials, verifies every change through test and review gates, and ships the result as a merged pull request — or holds it for your review, if that's what you've configured.
✓ / ~ / — describe the designed workflow of each product category, not a version-by-version feature audit — products evolve, so check the vendor's docs for current capabilities. The Keelen column is backed by shipped, tested code.
An editor and a loop are different tools
AI editors keep getting better at supervised work: you open a session, launch an agent on a task, watch it, and land the result. The human is the scheduler, the reviewer, and the memory. That's the designed shape of the category — great when you're present, idle when you're not.
Keelen replaces the human scheduler, not the human editor. A PM layer maintains the roadmap; the loop picks the top task, runs it in a fresh VM, and pushes a PR; failure classification and budgeted retries handle the flaky middle; lessons and steering rules persist across runs.
What runs while the editor is closed
Every iteration boots an isolated single-use VM that is destroyed when the run ends — your laptop is not involved and nothing persists on the machine. The scheduler runs 24/7 until you pause it, within the concurrency and monthly iteration limits of your plan.
Five gates stand between the AI and your main branch. New tests are applied without the implementation first and must fail — tests born green are rejected. An independent adversarial reviewer that shares no context with the dev run reviews the diff. Your real test suite runs on a clean checkout. Nothing merges over a red required CI check. And gated auto-merge waits out a review window — or you can replace it entirely with plan-review sign-off, manual merge, or branch-only mode.
Keep Cursor
Keelen's output is ordinary pull requests. Review them in Cursor, edit them in Cursor, reject them in Cursor. The loop doesn't care which editor you use — it only cares that the tests fail before the fix and pass after it.
FAQ
Is Keelen an editor like Cursor?
No. Keelen has no editor, no autocomplete, no chat panel. It operates at the repository level: it holds your roadmap, runs dev iterations in isolated single-use VMs, and ships pull requests. You keep writing hands-on code in whatever editor you prefer.
Can I keep using Cursor with Keelen?
Yes — that's the expected setup. Keelen's PRs are ordinary GitHub pull requests; review and amend them in your editor. Hands-on work and the autonomous loop never conflict because the loop works on branches and merges only through its gates.
Does Keelen work while my computer is off?
Yes. Iterations run in Keelen's isolated single-use VMs, not on your machine. The scheduler keeps dispatching around the clock until you pause it — your laptop can be closed the whole time.
How do I control what Keelen merges?
Five gates stand between the AI and your main branch. New tests are applied without the implementation first and must fail — tests born green are rejected. An independent adversarial reviewer that shares no context with the dev run reviews the diff. Your real test suite runs on a clean checkout. Nothing merges over a red required CI check. And gated auto-merge waits out a review window — or you can replace it entirely with plan-review sign-off, manual merge, or branch-only mode.