Benchmarking Startup Latency of Coding Agent CLIs with hyperfine

A DEV Community guide explains that coding agent CLIs can take noticeable time before a prompt reaches the model, especially when MCP servers are slow to respond. It notes documented wait limits: Claude Code waits up to 30 seconds for MCP servers by default, Codex waits 1,000 milliseconds for optional servers, and OpenCode allows 5,000 milliseconds for tool fetching. The author proposes using hyperfine, a benchmarking tool, to measure startup overhead layer by layer across Claude Code, Codex, GitHub Copilot CLI, and OpenCode in headless mode. The piece stresses that real timings depend on each user's own setup, so the documented figures are only ceilings. It also covers installation steps and notes that hyperfine 2.0 runs commands without a shell by default.
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