HQ vs. the alternatives
{/* FACT-CHECK BEFORE WIDE PROMOTION: competitor capabilities below reflect general knowledge as of mid-2026 and were not freshly web-verified. Keep the tone fair. */}
There are good ways to give an agent some context. Most of them are per-repo, per-user, or per-tool. HQ is the layer that makes context team-wide, persistent, and synced — and it works with the others, not instead of them.
At a glance
| Approach | What it is | Scope | Shared & synced across a team | Beyond instructions (skills · workers · policies) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CLAUDE.md / AGENTS.md | Markdown instructions committed into a repo | One repo | Via git, per repo | No — text only |
| Cursor / Windsurf rules | IDE rule files & memories | One project, one IDE | Partly; tool-locked | No |
| Copilot instructions | Repo/org custom instructions for Copilot | Copilot only | Org-level, tool-locked | No |
| Raw MCP servers | Connect agents to external tools & data | Per user / per config | No — per-user setup | Tools, not curated memory |
| Agent-memory tools (Mem0, Letta, Zep) | Long-term / conversational memory for agents & apps | Per app or per user | Developer-integrated | Memory, not team skills/policies |
| HQ | A shared context + capability layer over the agents you already use | Whole company, every tool | Yes — synced across the team | Knowledge + skills + workers + policies |
The honest version
These aren’t rivals — HQ is the layer above them.
- CLAUDE.md and MCP are great primitives — HQ uses them under the hood. The gap they leave is everything between repos and tools: company-wide knowledge, shared skills, and rules that travel with the team.
- IDE rules lock you to one tool. HQ’s context follows you across Claude Code, Codex, and Grok (Cursor gets an HQ rules file), so switching tools doesn’t reset your agent’s memory.
- Agent-memory tools remember conversations. HQ remembers the company — decisions, people, conventions, policies — and shares that across everyone’s agents.
If a CLAUDE.md is a sticky note on one repo, HQ is the company’s shared memory — synced, governed, and read by every agent automatically. Already using rules files or an MCP server? HQ makes them team-wide and persistent instead of per-person and per-repo.
Try it:
npx create-hq