Orgabot vs. Conductor: parallel agents or governed work?
Conductor helps you run and review several coding agents at once on your Mac. Orgabot delegates each piece of work to a role and gates it on tests, independent review and policy before it merges.
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What is the real difference between Orgabot and Conductor?
Both tools start from the same observation: one coding agent at a time is too slow, and several agents in one checkout overwrite each other. Both answer it with git worktrees, so each stream of work gets its own directory and branch. Past that point they are built for different people doing different things.
Conductor is a workbench. It is a Mac app where you create a workspace per shippable unit of work, run Claude Code, Codex, Cursor or OpenCode in it, read the diff, leave inline comments the agent picks up, open a pull request, check CI and todos, and merge. You are in the loop at every step, and the app is designed to make that loop fast.
Orgabot is a control plane. You describe an outcome, and it becomes a mission owned by a role in your org chart. The mission runs in an isolated worktree; Orgabot runs the project’s own test command and treats the exit code as the gate; a reviewer that did not write the change reviews it and sends findings back for fix rounds; and the result opens as a draft pull request. Merging and deploying need policy or your explicit approval. You are in the loop where policy says you must be, not at every keystroke.
How do Orgabot and Conductor compare?
| Dimension | Orgabot | Conductor |
|---|---|---|
| Primary job | Delegate a mission to a role and get back a verified, reviewed draft pull request or an explicit hold. | Run several coding agents at once and review, open a PR for, and merge each stream of work yourself. |
| Who drives | Orgabot plans and runs the mission; you set roles, policy and approvals. | You do: you create workspaces, prompt agents, review diffs and decide when to merge. |
| Agents | Claude Code by default; roles can use other providers such as Codex. | Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and OpenCode, per its docs. |
| Isolation | A real git worktree per mission. | A git worktree and branch per workspace, or several agents sharing one workspace by choice. |
| Verification | Runs the project’s own test command; the gate passes only on exit-code evidence. | A Checks tab surfaces CI, git status, deployments, comments and todos before merge. |
| Review | An independent reviewer that is never the producer; findings drive fix rounds and re-review. | Your review in a diff viewer with inline comments, plus an agent Review action. |
| Authority | Per-role capability packs and connector grants; no self-granting; merge and deploy need policy or approval. | Agents run in your workspace with the access you give them. Its docs do not describe a role or approval model. |
| Platform and status | Local-first, macOS first. Private alpha. | A Mac app. |
Conductor details come from its public site and documentation at conductor.build as of the date above. It ships often; check its docs for current features.
When is Conductor the better choice?
Choose Conductor when you want to drive the agents yourself. If your day is spent prompting, reading diffs, nudging an agent with a comment, and merging what looks right, Conductor puts all of that in one app with keyboard shortcuts for the diff viewer and pull request creation. Orgabot is not trying to be that workbench.
It is also the better choice when you want less setup. Orgabot asks you to register each project, choose the command that verifies it, and define the roles missions are routed to, and it is currently a private alpha. Conductor is organized around workspaces on repositories you already have, and if you want several agents sharing one workspace on purpose, it supports that directly. If your team works in a single repository and every change already gets a careful human read, the extra machinery Orgabot adds may not buy you much.
When is Orgabot the better choice?
Choose Orgabot when the bottleneck is you. In a workbench, every merge still depends on a person reading every diff. Orgabot moves the first line of review out of your head and into gates that do not get tired:
- Verification is evidence, not a status badge: the project’s own test command must exit cleanly before the work moves on.
- The reviewer is never the producer, and findings go back to a worker for a fix round and a fresh review.
- Pull requests open as drafts by intent; merge and deploy follow policy or your explicit approval.
- Each role has scoped capabilities and connector grants, and a role cannot grant itself more.
- Every decision lands in an append-only audit log you can read after the fact.
That matters most when you run work across several projects, when agents act on services beyond the repository, or when someone else will ask who approved a change. Orgabot is for delegation you can audit. Read how shipping and review work and the invariants Orgabot will not weaken.
What should a team ask before choosing?
Ask who reads each diff before it merges, and whether that scales with the number of agents you want to run. Ask whether an agent should act with your credentials or with narrower ones of its own. Ask what should happen when a change fails its tests at two in the morning: a red badge you see later, or a hold that says exactly what is missing. If the honest answers are you, yours, and a badge is fine, Conductor is simpler. If they point the other way, look at Orgabot, and check the known limitations first.
Frequently asked questions
- Is Orgabot a Conductor alternative?
- For some teams. Conductor is a Mac app for running several coding agents in parallel and reviewing their work yourself. Orgabot is a control plane that delegates missions to roles and gates them on tests, independent review and policy. If you want to drive agents by hand, Conductor is the more direct tool. If you want work to arrive already verified and reviewed, Orgabot is built for that.
- Do Conductor and Orgabot both use git worktrees?
- Yes. Conductor’s docs say it creates each workspace as a separate checkout with git worktrees, mapped to its own branch. Orgabot runs each mission in its own real git worktree. The isolation is similar; what happens around it is different.
- Does Conductor run my tests before merge?
- Conductor’s Checks tab collects git status, CI, deployments, comments and todos before you merge, and it may block or discourage a merge when checks fail or todos are open. Its docs describe it surfacing CI results rather than running your test suite itself. Orgabot runs the project’s own verification command and passes the gate only on the exit code.
- Which agents does each tool support?
- Conductor’s docs list Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and OpenCode. Orgabot uses Claude Code as its default worker, and a role can be pointed at other providers such as Codex.
- Can I use Conductor and Orgabot together?
- They do not integrate, but they do not compete for the same moment either. Conductor fits work you want to steer yourself; Orgabot fits work you delegate and want back as a verified, reviewed draft pull request. Both work on branches of your own repositories.
Delegate the work, keep the gates.
Orgabot is a private alpha for teams that want every mission verified by its own tests, reviewed by a different agent, and merged under policy.