AQ vs Superset: an editor for your agents, or a place for your team
Published July 19, 2026 · by the AQ team
Choose AQ if the point is your team: shared live workspaces where teammates watch the same agent terminal, edit the same files, and review the same running preview from any browser, on infrastructure you control. Choose Superset if all you want is a Mac desktop editor for orchestrating your own agents, by yourself. The one-line difference: AQ is the multiplayer harness your whole team enters; Superset is "The Code Editor for AI Agents" on one person's Mac.
Superset is a single-player orchestrator with team features bolted on. AQ was built multiplayer from the first commit, and everything downstream differs because of it. All claims about Superset below are as of July 2026, from its public site, pricing page, and repository.
AQ vs Superset at a glance
| AQ | Superset (as of July 2026) | |
|---|---|---|
| Form | Browser platform: works from macOS, Windows, Linux, and phones | Native macOS desktop app (download for macOS); IDE integrations for VS Code, Cursor, JetBrains, and others |
| Where agents run | Your own VM, or an AQ-managed dedicated VM (included with the paid plan) | Locally on your Mac; the Pro plan adds remote workspaces |
| Supported agents | Claude Code, Codex, Cursor Agent, Kimi, Grok, Pi, OpenCode, plus plain shells, as real CLIs in tmux | Agent-agnostic: any CLI-based tool, including Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Copilot, Gemini, and OpenCode |
| Isolation model | One git worktree per workspace | Parallel agents in isolated workspaces on one machine |
| Team collaboration | Multiplayer: teammates open the same workspace and share the live terminal, editor, and preview; guest links for outside reviewers | Single-player first; the Pro plan bolts on shared remote hosts, where teammates running the desktop app can reach workspaces on a shared machine through its relay |
| Issue tracker intake | Label a Linear issue "ai-task" and a workspace appears in the team sidebar; status syncs both ways | Linear integration on the Pro plan |
| Source model | Commercial platform | Source available under the Elastic License 2.0 (not open source); free tier plus paid plans |
| Pricing | Free on your own VM; Team plan $100 per user per month, promotional (standard $200), managed VM included | Free (1 user, local workspaces); Pro around $15 to $20 per user per month billed yearly, with remote workspaces and Linear integration; Enterprise custom |
What is Superset?
Superset (superset.sh) calls itself "The Code Editor for AI Agents": a native macOS app for orchestrating large numbers of coding agents in parallel, with the pitch "Orchestrate 100+ coding agents in parallel. Works for any agents." It is agent-agnostic (any CLI-based coding tool works), integrates with the editors and IDEs developers already use, and ships fast: it launched into Y Combinator's Spring 2026 batch, hit #1 product of the day on Product Hunt in February 2026, and its source-available repository has over 12,000 GitHub stars as of July 2026. The free tier covers one user with local workspaces; the Pro plan adds remote workspaces and a Linear integration.
Its natural user is an individual developer on a Mac, orchestrating their own agents inside an editor-shaped tool.
What is AQ?
AQ is the multiplayer coding harness where engineering teams run AI coding agents like Claude Code and Codex together: shared live terminals, a code editor, and app previews, in your own cloud.
Every AQ workspace is an isolated git worktree on a VM you control, with the real CLIs running in tmux and streamed live to the browser. The unit of collaboration is the workspace itself: a teammate opens your workspace URL and sees the same terminal scrollback, the same editor, and the same running preview, and can type, take over, or pin a comment on the preview and send it to the agent as a prompt. Work arrives by hand or from Linear, agents open PRs with each user's own GitHub sign-in, and AQ tracks those PRs per workspace.
Where Superset wins
- Editor-native experience. Superset is an editor built for agents, with IDE integrations across VS Code, Cursor, JetBrains, and more. AQ's editor is part of a browser workspace, not a native desktop editor.
- Personal orchestration at scale. The product is explicitly designed around one person running very many agents in parallel on a fast machine.
- Cheaper entry. The free tier needs no VM at all, and Pro at roughly $15 to $20 per user per month undercuts AQ's per-seat price.
- Source available. The code is public under the Elastic License 2.0. Not open source in the OSI sense, but you can read what you are running.
- Backing. YC Spring 2026 and a #1 Product Hunt launch day in February 2026.
Where AQ wins
- Multiplayer is the product, not a plan feature. Superset's version of sharing is teammates with the desktop app reaching workspaces on a shared Pro host. AQ's version is the platform itself: one URL drops any teammate, on any operating system, into the live session (terminal, editor, running preview), guest links bring in people outside the team, and preview comments can be sent straight to the agent. We did not add sharing to a solo tool; we built the tool around sharing.
- Every platform, today. AQ runs in the browser on macOS, Windows, Linux, and phones. Superset's download is macOS as of July 2026.
- Your infrastructure, on every plan. AQ executes agents on a VM you bring even on the Free plan, or an AQ-managed dedicated VM on the Team plan. Runs survive laptop lids and travel with you between devices.
- Team-level intake and tracking. Linear issues become workspaces in a shared sidebar with two-way status sync, and every workspace's PRs are tracked where the whole team can see them.
- Previews as a review surface. Shareable live previews with comments that can be sent to the agent turn "look what the agent did" into a link anyone can open.
The deeper difference: whose screen is the work on?
Superset started from "how do I, one developer, orchestrate a fleet of agents well?" and answered it with an editor; team access arrived later, as a Pro feature. AQ started from "how does a team run agents as a shared practice?" and every capability follows from that foundation: browser access from any OS, guests from outside the team, reviews on a running preview, tracker intake and PR visibility that belong to the team rather than a person. Retrofits show at the edges; foundations don't. The more people need to touch the work while it is in flight, the wider the gap gets.
Bottom line
If all you need is a personal Mac tool, Superset does that job. If the question is how your team runs agents, AQ is the platform built for exactly that: shared live sessions on any OS, execution on infrastructure you control, intake and review wired for more than one person. We think it is the best team platform for coding agents there is.
Frequently asked questions
Is Superset open source?
Its source is public under the Elastic License 2.0 as of July 2026, which is source-available rather than open source in the OSI sense. If OSI open source is a requirement, Emdash (Apache 2.0) is the notable option in this lane. AQ is a commercial platform.
Does Superset work on Windows or Linux?
The desktop download is macOS as of July 2026. AQ is browser-based and works from macOS, Windows, Linux, and mobile browsers; the agents run on a VM rather than on your device.
Can my team share a live agent session in Superset?
On the Pro plan, teammates running the Superset desktop app can reach workspaces on a shared remote host through its relay. AQ does this without the qualifiers: any teammate, any OS, one URL into the same live terminal, editor, and preview, no desktop app required, plus guest links for people outside the team.
Which is cheaper, AQ or Superset?
Superset, in most cases: it has a free single-user tier with no VM required, and Pro is roughly $15 to $20 per user per month as of July 2026. AQ is $100 per user per month at promotional pricing (standard $200) with a managed, always-on VM included, plus a Free plan if you bring your own VM. You are paying for the multiplayer platform and the dedicated infrastructure.
Do AQ and Superset support the same agents?
Broadly yes; both are agent-agnostic around CLI-based tools like Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and OpenCode. AQ runs them as real CLIs in tmux on a shared VM; Superset runs them inside its Mac editor, locally or in Pro remote workspaces.