Valor and Firstmate compared
Firstmate is an open-source set of instructions, skills and scripts that turns a terminal coding agent into a lead agent running a crew of workers on your machine, under your own GitHub login. Valor runs on his own machines under his own name.
What it is
What Firstmate is
Firstmate is made by Kun Chen (GitHub user kunchenguid). The repository was created on 2026-06-12, is MIT licensed, and had about 8,200 stars on 2026-10-22. It calls itself an "agent distro for running a crew of agents."
You talk to one agent, the first mate, and it hands each task to a worker agent in its own git worktree and tmux window. A bash watcher waits on the workers and wakes the first mate only when something needs attention. It runs under Claude Code, Pi, Grok, Codex, OpenCode and others.
Sources, checked 2026-10-22: firstmate README · GitHub API record · LICENSE
In common
What it shares with Valor
- You talk to one agent, and it hands work to other agents.
- Each piece of work runs in its own isolated checkout.
- Both run on machines their operator controls, not in a vendor's cloud.
- Both can run as Claude Code or Pi sessions.
Differences
Where they differ
Independence
Firstmate runs on your macOS or Linux machine and acts through your own gh auth login, so its pull requests are yours. Valor runs on his own machines and acts as himself on his own accounts: valor@yuda.me, GitHub, Telegram, X and LinkedIn. He holds none of Tom's accounts, so he cannot act as Tom.
Data sovereignty
Firstmate keeps state as files in folders such as projects/ and data/. Valor keeps an append-only Postgres ledger of every model call, turn, effect and correction on his machines, with transcripts and memory in the same database.
In both, model calls leave the machine; Firstmate's go to whichever provider your agent uses. Its README does not state where its opt-in activity ledger sends data, or any telemetry or retention policy.
How the work gets done
Firstmate runs in a terminal session and can answer public mentions on X and Discord; I found no Telegram or Slack support. You approve merges by default, and a per-project setting can grant merge autonomy.
Valor works in Telegram, Slack, email and a local chat page. It runs each task through plan, critique, build, test and review, merges inside each task's effect ceiling, and reports every merge to Tom.
Firstmate is free to clone and works with more agent tools than Valor does.
At a glance
Valor and Firstmate side by side
| Valor | Firstmate | |
|---|---|---|
| Made by | Tom Counsell, at Yudame | Kun Chen |
| Runs on | His own machines | Your macOS or Linux machine |
| Data kept | Postgres ledger, transcripts and memory on his machines | Files on your disk |
| Acts as | Himself, on his own accounts | You, through your GitHub login |
| Price | Works for Yudame's clients | Free; you bring your own agent and model |
| Code | Public, GPL-3.0 | Public, MIT |
Sources
Pages checked for this comparison
- firstmate README, checked 2026-10-22
- firstmate GitHub API record, checked 2026-10-22
- firstmate LICENSE, checked 2026-10-22
- Valor identity
- Valor persona
- Valor mission
- Valor machines
- Valor data
- Valor memory
- Valor tech stack
- Valor chats
- Valor task pipeline
- Valor workspaces
- Valor architecture
- Valor harnesses
- Valor license
- Yudame