Orgabot vs. Claude Code Agent Teams
Agent Teams coordinates Claude Code sessions. Orgabot coordinates the work: who owns it, what verifies it, who reviews it, and who may merge it.
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What is the real difference?
Agent Teams is a feature of Claude Code. You ask for teammates, and your session becomes the team lead. Each teammate is a full Claude Code instance with its own context window that loads your project’s CLAUDE.md, MCP servers and skills. The team shares a task list whose tasks can depend on one another, claims work with file locking so two teammates cannot take the same task, and talks through a mailbox. You can message any teammate yourself, in one terminal or in tmux or iTerm2 split panes.
Anthropic is clear that this is experimental and off by default, and its docs are unusually direct about fit. The strongest cases are research and review, separate new modules, debugging with competing hypotheses, and cross-layer changes. For sequential work, same-file edits or heavily dependent work, the docs point you back to a single session or subagents.
Orgabot works one layer up. It does not make agents talk to each other; it decides what happens to their work. An instruction becomes a mission owned by a role in your org chart. The mission runs in its own git worktree, and Claude Code is the default worker that does the editing. Orgabot runs the project’s own test command and gates on the exit code, has a reviewer that never wrote the change review it, and opens a draft pull request. Merging and deploying need policy or your explicit approval. In short: Agent Teams coordinates sessions, and Orgabot coordinates the work with gates.
How do Orgabot and Agent Teams compare?
| Dimension | Orgabot | Claude Code Agent Teams |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A local-first control plane that runs missions for roles in an org chart. | A Claude Code feature: a lead session coordinating teammate sessions. |
| Unit of work | A mission, owned by a role, ending in a draft PR or an explicit hold. | Tasks on a shared task list, claimed by teammates. |
| Coordination | Orgabot plans a task graph and routes it; you set roles and policy. | The lead assigns tasks or teammates self-claim; teammates message each other. |
| Isolation | A real git worktree per mission. | Separate context windows. The docs advise giving each teammate its own files. |
| Quality gates | Built in: the project’s test command exit code gates the work. | Hooks you write, such as TaskCompleted exiting with code 2. |
| Review | An independent reviewer that is never the producer, with fix rounds. | Possible to set up, for example a reviewer teammate; not enforced. |
| Authority | Per-role capability packs and connector grants; merge and deploy need policy or approval. | Teammates start with the lead’s permission mode; prompts surface in the lead session. |
| Resumption | Missions are journaled; durable mode is restart-safe. | /resume and /rewind do not restore in-process teammates. |
| Status | Private alpha, macOS first. | Experimental, disabled by default, interactive sessions only. |
Agent Teams details come from Anthropic’s Agent Teams documentation as of the date above. It is an experimental feature and changes between Claude Code releases.
When is Agent Teams the better choice?
When you are already in Claude Code and the work is exploratory. Reviewing a pull request through three lenses at once, researching a library, or setting five teammates to disprove each other’s theories about a bug are exactly what Agent Teams is good at, and none of them ends in a merge that needs governing. Anthropic’s own advice is to start there.
It is also the lighter option by a wide margin. There is nothing else to install: one setting, and you describe the team you want. You watch and steer every teammate live. Orgabot, by contrast, is a private alpha that targets macOS first and asks you to register projects, choose a verification command and define roles before it earns its keep. If you want interactive collaboration inside one session, Agent Teams is the right tool and Orgabot would be overhead.
When is Orgabot the better choice?
When the output is a change to a repository that someone will merge, and you want it to arrive already checked. Agent Teams gives you the building blocks for gates, and you can write them as hooks. Orgabot makes them properties of every mission:
- Each mission gets its own git worktree, so parallel work cannot overwrite itself.
- Verification is the project’s own test command, and a worker saying it is done is not evidence.
- The reviewer is never the producer; findings go back for a fix round and a fresh review.
- Each role holds scoped capabilities and connector grants, and cannot grant itself more.
- Pull requests open as drafts, and merge or deploy wait for policy or your approval.
It also fits work you are not watching. Agent Teams runs in an interactive session and its teammates do not come back after a resume. Orgabot journals each mission, holds with a specific reason when something it needs is missing, and keeps the worktree, branch and evidence so the mission can be picked up. See how missions work and what Orgabot does not do yet.
Can you use both?
Yes, because they answer different questions. A reasonable split is to use Agent Teams while you are exploring a problem in Claude Code, then hand the change you decided on to Orgabot as a mission so it is built, verified, reviewed and delivered under your rules. The guide to orchestrating Claude Code covers the full range, from subagents to a governed control plane.
Frequently asked questions
- What are Claude Code Agent Teams?
- An experimental Claude Code feature, disabled by default, that lets one session act as a team lead and spawn teammates. Each teammate is a separate Claude Code instance with its own context window. The team shares a task list with dependencies, and teammates message each other directly. You enable it with the CLAUDE_CODE_EXPERIMENTAL_AGENT_TEAMS setting.
- Is Orgabot a replacement for Agent Teams?
- No. Agent Teams coordinates Claude Code sessions inside one interactive session. Orgabot coordinates the work around agents: which role owns it, where it runs, what verifies it, who reviews it, and who may merge it. Orgabot uses Claude Code as its default worker, so the two sit at different layers.
- Does Agent Teams have quality gates?
- It has hooks you can use as gates. A TaskCompleted hook that exits with code 2 prevents a task from being marked complete and sends feedback; TeammateIdle and TaskCreated work the same way. You write and maintain those hooks. Orgabot builds its gates in: the project’s test command exit code, an independent reviewer, and policy or approval before merge.
- When should I use Agent Teams instead of Orgabot?
- For research, code review, and debugging with competing hypotheses, when you are already working in Claude Code and want to watch and steer the team. It needs no extra install beyond Claude Code and one setting, and Anthropic’s docs recommend starting with exactly those tasks.
- Can teammates in an agent team edit the same files?
- Anthropic’s docs warn that two teammates editing the same file leads to overwrites, and recommend splitting work so each teammate owns a different set of files. Orgabot runs each mission in its own git worktree.
Coordinate the work, not just the sessions.
Orgabot is a private alpha for teams that want every mission owned by a role, verified by its own tests, reviewed by a different agent, and merged under policy.