Overview

Droid is the AI coding agent from Factory AI, an “agent-native software
development” platform. Droid CLI is the terminal entry point: it takes a
natural-language task, plans it, writes and tests code across a repository,
and opens a pull request — “one prompt to PR.” The same agent is also
available inside VS Code, JetBrains, a browser, and Slack/Teams, so the CLI
is one surface among several rather than the whole product.

Key Features

  • Model flexibility (BYOK) — no vendor lock-in: run tasks against Claude,
    GPT, Gemini, or other providers per task; as of 2026 bring-your-own-key
    support extends to Ollama, OpenRouter, Fireworks, and DeepInfra.
  • Codebase comprehension — agentic search that understands an entire
    repository well enough to coordinate changes across hundreds of files in
    one task.
  • Spec Mode — a planning step that produces a reviewable spec before the
    agent starts editing, for tasks where you want to check the approach first.
  • Missions — longer-running, multi-step autonomous jobs (as opposed to a
    single supervised edit), plus custom droids, skills, and plugins for
    extending behavior.
  • Adjustable autonomy — a permission model ranging from fully supervised
    (review every change) to autonomous execution, aimed at making the tool
    usable in security-conscious enterprise settings.
  • droid exec — a non-interactive/scriptable execution mode for running
    Droid from CI or other automation, alongside native git worktree support
    for running multiple tasks in parallel.
  • Droid Control (graduated from experimental to stable in 2026) — lets
    the agent operate browsers and desktop apps to produce QA reports and demo
    videos, extending it beyond pure code editing.
  • Automatic AI-powered code review, security scanning, and PR descriptions
    on pull requests.

Performance & Pricing

  • Ranked #12 on Terminal-Bench with 77.3% (±2.2) accuracy (Version 2.0,
    tested 2026-02-24).
  • Freemium pricing: a free tier, with paid plans in the $20–200/month range.

Positioning

Droid competes directly with Claude Code, OpenAI Codex,
and other terminal-based coding agents. Its differentiators are explicit
multi-model support (no single-provider lock-in) and a broader “agent-native”
platform story — the same Droid agent works across CLI, IDE, browser, and
chat, rather than being CLI-first.

Sources