The AI Coding Agent Decision Kit — Muse Code vs Claude Code vs Codex, With the 20x Pricing Math and the Fine Print Meta Hopes You Skip

The companion kit to the launch-day video. On Aug 5, 2026 Meta shipped Muse Code — and its contributor tier prices coding at $0.10/$0.20 per million tokens (12.5x/21x under its own standard tier, cached input 75x cheaper) in exchange for one line of fine print: permission to use your prompts and completions to train future Meta models. On a fresh account, that tier was the default. We ran the same 3-feature task on the same 100-line game repo through Muse Code, Claude Code, and Codex, back to back, recorded live and verified in a real browser: a 3-for-3 quality tie — Muse ~2:00 for $0.018 billed, Claude Code (Fable 5) 2:03 at a $3.63 sticker ($0 marginal on Max), Codex (gpt-5.6-sol) 2:17 at ≈$0.66 sticker ($0 marginal on Pro). INSIDE: (1) the full pricing table with the verbatim fine print and the contributor-default finding, (2) every number from the head-to-head with the method, (3) THE FINE-PRINT CHECKLIST — when the 20-cent tier is a steal (prototypes, learning, code you'd post publicly) and when it's a trap (client work, employer code, NDAs), plus the exact tier-switch command and Meta's zero-data-retention request path, (4) the safe-setup steps, (5) sources with links. Honest caveats included: prices as of Aug 5, 2026, and one small task is a receipt, not a benchmark. Independent kit from Hyperautomation Labs — not affiliated with Meta, Anthropic, or OpenAI.

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