ACP vs MCP in Rig
MCP (local)
ACP (editor ↔ agent)
Rule of thumb
See also
Same product family, different job.
Coding on this Mac → MCP. Asking “what’s down on my fleet?” from an ACP editor → ACP.
- Hub on your Mac (127.0.0.1)
- Cursor, Claude, Codex, Copilot CLI, OpenCode, Pi, Windsurf, VS Code
- Start/stop projects, logs, ports, health — scoped tools, not a raw shell
- Protocol for plugging an agent into Zed / JetBrains (and eventually others)
- Rig’s ACP agent talks to Rig Cloud (status, devices, Mesh, tickets)
- Does not control local processes — that stays on MCP
- Connect AI editors (MCP)
- Connect editors via ACP
- AI & MCP
- ACP product page
acp vs mcp difference local hub cloud agent cursor zed coding fleet status
Related guides
This article is part of the Rig knowledge base at userig.app/docs. Rig is a local-first Mac app that runs, watches, and restarts development processes with unified logs, ports, and a scoped MCP hub for AI coding agents. Your source code stays on your Mac.