Drawn to scale: star radius ∝ √(source lines of code), measured from each public repository in 2026-07. The big stars are genuinely big — neutron core carries ~244× less code than the largest of them.
Line counts measured from each project's source (vendored code excluded); Claude Code's is a conservative floor. Even this scale is generous to us: at true stellar proportions — the Sun is ~70,000× the diameter of a neutron star — the blue point would be smaller than a pixel. Things really do orbit neutron stars: the first exoplanets ever confirmed (1992) circle the pulsar PSR B1257+12, and many neutron stars hold companion stars in tight binaries. Density ~10¹⁷ kg/m³ — a sugar-cube of core outweighs a mountain.
The big stars win on surface, and honestly so: OpenClaw's channel breadth and native apps, Hermes' provider range and self-improving skills, Codex's OS sandboxes are all excellent. neutron core competes on binding force — the multi-user governance plane that the rest of the chart, by design charter, doesn't build.
| Capability | neutron core | Claude Code | Codex | opencode | OpenClaw | Hermes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Multiple human users with roles | ✓ | — | — | partial | — | — |
| Separation of duties — requester never self-approves | ✓ | — | — | — | — | — |
| N branded instances from one image, by config | ✓ | — | — | — | personas, one operator | profiles, one operator |
| Agents administer agents under a no-escalation rule | ✓ | — | — | — | owner-only | — |
| Human approval gates | ✓ role-routed | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Chat channels | web · GitLab · GitHub | CLI · IDE | CLI · IDE | TUI · web · Slack | 25 | ~30 |
| Model providers | Claude · GLM · Bedrock | Claude | OpenAI | many | ~57 | ~30 |
Assessed from each project's public repository (2026-07). Claude Code is not a rival here — it's the engine: neutron core is a governance chrome around the Claude Agent SDK. Corrections welcome.