Deep Agents is actively used in production by OpenSWE and LangSmith Fleet.
Overview
| Aspect | LangChain Deep Agents | Claude Agent SDK | Codex SDK |
|---|---|---|---|
| Use cases | Custom general-purpose agents (including coding) | Custom AI coding agents | Prebuilt coding agent that can execute coding tasks |
| Model support | Flexible and model-agnostic (Anthropic, OpenAI, and 100s others) | Tightly integrated with Claude models (Anthropic, Azure, Vertex AI, AWS Bedrock) | Tightly integrated with OpenAI models (GPT-5.3-Codex and variants) |
| Architecture | Python SDK, TypeScript SDK, and CLI | Python SDK, TypeScript SDK | TypeScript SDK, CLI, desktop app, IDE extension, cloud interface |
| Execution environment | Local, remote sandboxes, virtual filesystem | Local | Local, cloud |
| Deployment | deepagents deploy | Self-hosted | N/A |
| Frontend | Integration with React | Server-side only | Server-side only |
| Observability | LangSmith tracing & evaluations | N/A | OpenAI traces & command-line evaluations |
| Security configurability | Composable, per-tool human-in-the-loop | Permission system with modes, rules and hooks | Built-in tiers using approval modes and OS-level sandboxes |
| License | MIT | MIT (underlying Claude Code is proprietary) | Apache-2.0 |
Key differences
LangChain Deep Agents:- Model flexibility: Swap model providers (Anthropic, OpenAI, or 100+ others) at any time and run evaluations.
- Long-term memory: Persist context across sessions and threads with the Memory Store
- Sandbox-as-tool pattern: Run individual operations in isolated sandboxes from different providers while the agent runs outside, or run the full agent inside a sandbox
- Virtual filesystem: Use pluggable backends (in-memory, disk, durable stores, sandboxes) for context and checkpoint management
- Production deployment: Deploy via
deepagents deployor self-host with the Agent Server - Observability: Use LangSmith for native tracing and debugging
- Standardize on Claude: First-class support for Claude models across Anthropic, Azure, Vertex AI, and AWS Bedrock
- Custom hosting: Build your own HTTP/WebSocket layer and run the SDK in containers
- Hooks: Easily intercept and control agent behavior
- Standardize on OpenAI: GPT-5.3-Codex and OpenAI-specific tooling
- OS-level sandbox modes: Use built-in
read-only,workspace-write, ordanger-full-accessmodes - MCP server mode: Expose your agent as an MCP server with
codex mcp-server - Observability: Use OpenAI Traces
Feature comparison
| Feature | Deep Agents | Claude Agent SDK | Codex SDK |
|---|---|---|---|
| Core tools | |||
| File Read/Write/Edit | ✅ read_file, write_file, edit_file | ✅ Read, write, edit | ✅ Read, write, edit |
| Shell Execution | ✅ execute | ✅ bash | ✅ exec |
| Glob/Grep | ✅ glob, grep | ✅ glob, grep | ✅ Built-in |
| Web Search | ✅ support for third-party and provider-native | ✅ WebSearch, WebFetch | ✅ web_search |
| Planning/Todos | ✅ write_todos | ✅ Todo lists | ✅ Plan before changes |
| Subagents | ✅ Subagents | ✅ Subagents | ✅ Multi-agent workflows (experimental) via MCP + Agents SDK |
| MCP Client | ✅ | ✅ MCP | ✅ MCP client |
| Human-in-the-Loop | ✅ Approve/edit/reject | ✅ Permission modes | ✅ Approval modes (Full Access, Read-only, Auto) |
| Skills System | ✅ Skills | ✅ Skills | ✅ Skills |
| Additional instructions | ✅ Memory | ✅ CLAUDE.md files | ✅ AGENTS.md |
| Long-term memory | ✅ Memory Store | ❌ | ❌ |
| Streaming | ✅ Streaming | ✅ Streaming | ✅ Streaming |
| Sandbox Integrations | |||
| Agent runs in sandbox | ✅ Can run in sandbox | ✅ Can run in sandbox | ✅ Can run in sandbox |
| Agent runs operations in sandboxes | ✅ Uses sandboxes as tools | ❌ | ❌ |
| OS-level sandbox modes | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ read-only, workspace-write, and danger-full-access |
| Architecture | |||
| Composable Middleware | ✅ | ✅ Hooks | ❌ |
| Virtual Filesystems | ✅ Virtual filesystem with pluggable backends | ❌ | ❌ |
| Deployment | |||
| Production hosting | ✅ LangSmith Deployment, deepagents deploy, self-hosted, or standalone | Build your own HTTP/WebSocket layer; run SDK in containers | ❌ |
| Local execution environment | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Cloud execution environment | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Supported protocols | |||
| ACP server (IDE integration) | ✅ ACP server | ✅ (third-party) | ✅ (third-party) |
| MCP server mode | MCP endpoint through Agent Server | ❌ | ✅ codex mcp-server |
| A2A endpoint | ✅ A2A endpoint in Agent Server | ✅ | ❌ |
| State management | |||
| Session Resume | ✅ | ✅ Session management | ✅ Resume threads; SDK resumeThread() |
| File Checkpointing | ✅ Backends and checkpoints | ✅ File checkpointing | ✅ Git checkpoints |
| Time Travel (state branching) | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Observability | |||
| Native Tracing | ✅ LangSmith | ❌ | ✅ OpenAI Traces |
| Evaluations | ✅ LangSmith | ❌ | Evals patterns (Command-line with codex exec --json) |
Notice a mistake?We drafted this comparison on March 4th, 2026.
If you notice mistakes or changes in products, please file an issue.
Connect these docs to Claude, VSCode, and more via MCP for real-time answers.