Meta announced Wednesday a beta version of Muse Code, a new coding agent powered by its Muse Spark 1.2 AI model, aimed at competing with Anthropic's Claude Code and OpenAI's Codex. Meta said Muse Code can handle complex software engineering tasks, such as writing code and validating results. Meta's AI chief Alexandr Wang said in an X post that Muse Code is "one of the most affordable coding agents on the market, available globally." The standard version of Muse Spark 1.2 costs $1.25 per million input tokens, 15 cents per million cached-input tokens, and $4.25 per million output tokens. A discounted "contributor" tier includes a stipulation that user activity will be used to improve Meta's products. Anthropic's Pro Plan, which is $20 a month, includes Claude Code, while Max plans cost $100 to $200 a month. OpenAI's Codex is available through a ChatGPT Plus plan that costs $20 a month, and OpenAI's Pro plan costs $100 a month. The launch reflects how software coding has become a critical part of the AI battleground, as coding agents can examine a company's software, run tests, and write code with limited supervision. During Meta's first-quarter earnings call in April, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said developer tools weren't the company's primary focus, though he was not opposed to offering coding tools.