Maintenance-only. SWE-agent has been superseded by mini-SWE-agent — simpler and more flexible while just as performant. New projects should start there; see the FAQ for why.
Overview
SWE-agent gives a language model a purpose-built agent–computer interface (ACI) — commands to view, edit, and test files in a repository — and lets it work through a GitHub issue end to end.
It’s a reference implementation behind many strong SWE-bench results and a clean base for issue-fixing agents.
flowchart LR issue[GitHub issue] --> agent[SWE-agent] agent -->|ACI commands| repo[(sandboxed repo)] repo -->|test results| agent agent --> patch[patch to review]
The Code samples tab has the CLI usage.
When to use it
Reach for SWE-agent when the unit of work is a GitHub issue and you want a research-grade, benchmarkable loop focused on automated bug fixing.