Is Smoke Monkey an AI model?

No. Smoke Monkey is not an LLM. It is an embeddable, framework-agnostic runtime that turns LLMs (NVIDIA, Gemini, OpenAI, Claude, Ollama) into autonomous engineering agents capable of multi-step planning, calling tools, editing files, and running test loops with zero runtime dependencies.

Do I need a database (Postgres, SQLite, or Redis)?

No database is required. State is persisted through lean session files on disk, or you can plug in your own custom storage adapter. You can deploy it as a CLI, a desktop app, or inside a serverless function without provisioning a database.

How does human-in-the-loop permission gating work?

Smoke Monkey comes with three permission policies: allow-all, deny-all, and ask-default (or a custom function resolver). When a sensitive tool like edit_file or run_command is called under "ask", the runtime emits a permission.required event, pausing execution until your code or UI calls agent.resolvePermission(id, "allow" | "deny").

How does the Model Context Protocol (MCP) server work?

Smoke Monkey ships an official stdio MCP server in smoke-monkey-harness-mcp. Point Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, or opencode at it using npx -y smoke-monkey-harness-mcp to let other AI tools plan, scaffold, verify, and run agents using Smoke Monkey automatically.

What are SKILL.md skills and how do they prevent context bloat?

Skills are directories containing a SKILL.md workflow file. The system prompt only includes a one-line catalog of available skills. When a task requires specialized expertise (e.g. frontend-ui-engineering, test-driven-development, or security-hardening), the agent calls use_skill to load instructions just-in-time, saving thousands of tokens.

What is an AI Agent Harness?

An AI agent harness is the execution environment that bridges raw Large Language Models (LLMs) to real-world software engineering capabilities. While an LLM generates tokens, an AI harness manages deterministic phase loops (explore, plan, edit, verify, recover), tool execution sandboxing, token budget compaction, and safety gates needed for autonomous problem-solving.

What makes Smoke Monkey an Agentic AI runtime rather than a simple wrapper?

Unlike basic prompt-response chains, Smoke Monkey implements true agentic AI architecture: a deterministic 6-phase state machine with automatic failure recovery, runaway loop guards, 24 built-in developer tools, dynamic subcontext isolation, and interactive human-in-the-loop permission pauses.

Is Smoke Monkey Harness 100% Open Source AI?

Yes. Smoke Monkey Harness is 100% open source under the permissive MIT license with zero runtime dependencies. There is no telemetry lock-in, no mandatory cloud backend, and no database requirement—giving engineering teams complete sovereignty over their agent code.

What Agent APIs does Smoke Monkey Harness provide?

Smoke Monkey provides composable TypeScript Agent APIs: createAgent() for initialization, agent.run() for multi-turn execution, agent.on() for fine-grained lifecycle and streaming events, agent.resolvePermission() for interactive human authorization, subcontext switching APIs, and stdio Model Context Protocol (MCP) server endpoints.

Can I run completely offline without API keys?

Yes! Smoke Monkey natively supports Ollama out of the box. Set provider: "ollama" and model: "qwen3:8b" with workspacePath, and the agent will run locally on your machine with zero external network requests.

Smoke Monkey vs Cursor Composer

Proprietary AI EditorUpdated: October 2026

Cursor Composer Agent Alternative: Embeddable Code Editing Engine

Cursor Composer is a proprietary code-editing agent locked inside the Cursor IDE. Smoke Monkey Harness provides the underlying agent runtime, surgical diff engine, and UI components needed to build your own Cursor-like editing workflows in any application.

Comparative Benchmark: Smoke Monkey Harness TypeScript vs Cursor Composer

|Verified for Node.js 18+ & Bun|100% MIT Open Source

The Executive Verdict (Quick Answer)

Why choose Smoke Monkey over Cursor Composer? Choose Smoke Monkey Harness to build custom internal developer tools, proprietary code generation platforms, or web-based AI IDEs without proprietary licensing fees.

Why Developers Switch from Cursor Composer to Smoke Monkey

Embeddable Runtime: Build web-based, desktop, or cloud code editing workflows.

Drop-In React Chat UI: `@smoke-monkey/ui` provides the streaming timeline, tool execution diffs, and approval modals.

Surgical Chunk Replacement: AST-aware multi-replace prevents accidental file truncations.

Full Privacy & Zero Data Harvesting: Run completely private or offline with local LLMs.

Detailed Feature-by-Feature Matrix

Direct side-by-side comparison of core runtime capabilities and architectural trade-offs.

Capability	Smoke Monkey Harness	Cursor Composer	Key Architectural Difference
Codebase Ownership	✅ 100% Open Source MIT Engine	❌ Closed Source Proprietary IDE	Embed the editing engine in your own internal tools or customer-facing apps.

Code Implementation Comparison

Applying Multi-File Edits with Chunk Replacement

Smoke Monkey (TypeScript)Zero Dependencies

composer-engine.tstypescript

1import { createAgent } from 'smoke-monkey-harness';
2
3const agent = createAgent({
4  workspacePath: './my-app',
5  provider: 'openai',
6  model: 'gpt-4o',
7});
8
9// Emits precise code diff events suitable for UI review
10agent.on('tool.started', (e) => {
11  if (e.data.toolName === 'replace_file_content') {
12    console.log('Editing target:', e.data.args.TargetFile);
13  }
14});
15
16await agent.run('Add dark mode toggle to header and sync with localStorage');

Cursor ComposerClosed Source IDE

cursor-uitext

1// Cursor Composer operates inside the closed VS Code fork
2// Cannot be embedded into internal portals, browser tabs, or CI pipelines

Architecture Note: Smoke Monkey enables developer teams to build proprietary AI code generation systems without third-party editor constraints.

Surgical Chunk Editing vs Whole-File Rewrites

When AI models rewrite 500-line files from scratch, they frequently hallucinate or drop unrelated functions. Smoke Monkey enforces target-content matching chunks with line-range validation, ensuring that only targeted lines are modified.

Frequently Asked Questions

Questions Developers Ask About Cursor Composer Alternatives

Q:Does Smoke Monkey support VS Code or Cursor extensions?

Yes! Through its Model Context Protocol (MCP) server, Smoke Monkey connects directly to Cursor and VS Code.

Switch to Smoke Monkey Harness Today

Build autonomous coding agents with zero runtime dependencies, deterministic 6-phase loops, and Model Context Protocol (MCP) in pure TypeScript.

npm install smoke-monkey-harness