Armature benchmarks coding agents’ tool picks

The key finding is that agent discoverability is becoming a distribution channel, but there is no universal “best” tool—context, search behavior, and documentation shape every choice.

• –The same email task favored Resend in TypeScript, SendGrid in Python, Postmark in Go, and Azure ACS in Java.
• –Codex searched the web in 94% of sessions, Cursor in roughly two-thirds, while Claude Code relied more heavily on prior knowledge.
• –Claude Code built solutions in-house nearly twice as often as the other agents, showing meaningful behavioral differences between coding systems.
• –Mentions did not translate into adoption: PayPal was cited 139 times but never selected, while LangChain was mentioned 194 times and picked only four times.
• –The study is especially useful for tool vendors, though its conclusions should be read alongside Armature’s commercial interest in improving agent discoverability.