Conductor Alternatives for Windows and Linux Developers

Published August 11, 2026 · by the AQ team

Conductor is a Mac-only desktop app as of August 2026: it requires macOS on Apple Silicon, Windows support is a waitlist, and there is no announced Linux version. If you are on Windows or Linux and want what Conductor does (several coding agents in parallel, each in an isolated git worktree, one place to review and merge), you have four practical routes: Emdash, an open source cross-platform desktop app with nearly the same design; the Claude Code desktop app, which runs parallel worktree-isolated sessions natively on Windows and Linux; a do-it-yourself setup with git worktrees and tmux; or a browser-based platform like AQ that moves execution to a server so the OS on your desk stops mattering. This guide covers each route with honest fit notes.

What you are replacing: Conductor's actual recipe

Conductor (conductor.build, by Melty Labs) is free and runs Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and OpenCode agents in parallel on your Mac. Its recipe has three ingredients:

• Parallel agents as real CLIs. Several tasks progress at once, on the agent subscriptions you already pay for.
• One isolated git worktree per task. Each agent works on its own branch in its own checkout, so parallel tasks never trample each other.
• A single review surface. Diffs, terminals, and merge actions for every task in one window.

In July 2026 Conductor also launched Conductor Cloud: workspaces in isolated cloud sandboxes that keep working when you close the app and can be shared with teammates, plus an iPhone app and an API. A real capability, but as of August 2026 the app you drive it from is still Mac-only, so a Windows or Linux developer cannot use Conductor today, cloud workspaces included.

The question, then, is which ingredients you need on your actual operating system. (Choosing for a team rather than an OS? The Conductor alternatives roundup compares the whole field.)

Route 1: Emdash, the closest like-for-like replacement

Emdash (emdash.com) is the nearest thing to Conductor that installs on Windows and Linux as of August 2026. It is an open source desktop app (Apache 2.0, YC W26 backed) with the same shape: multiple coding agents in parallel, each in its own git worktree, with diffs, PR creation, and review in one place. It ships a Windows installer, a Linux AppImage and Debian package, and a macOS build, auto-detects installed agent CLIs including Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, OpenCode, Amp, and Devin, pulls tasks from Linear, Jira, and GitHub Issues, and can run agents over SSH on a remote machine.

Fit: if you want exactly the Conductor experience on Windows or Linux today, start here. The trade-offs are those of a young open source desktop app: execution is local by default, so agents stop when your machine sleeps unless you wire up the SSH remote path yourself. The AQ vs Emdash comparison goes deeper on where the two diverge.

Route 2: Claude Code Desktop, if Claude is your only agent

Anthropic's own Claude Code desktop app now covers much of Conductor's ground natively on non-Mac platforms. As of August 2026 it ships for macOS, Windows (x64 and ARM64), and Linux in beta (apt and .deb packages for Ubuntu and Debian), and it runs parallel sessions in a single window, each session in its own isolated git worktree so changes stay separate until you commit.

Fit: if your team is all-in on Claude Code, this is the zero-extra-tools answer from the vendor of the agent itself. What you give up is the multi-agent half of the recipe: Conductor and Emdash orchestrate Codex, Cursor, and others side by side; the Claude Code app runs Claude Code.

Route 3: Do it yourself with git worktrees and tmux

The recipe is reproducible with tools already on your machine, on any OS (on Windows, use WSL for the smoothest path, since tmux is a Unix tool). One worktree per task, one tmux session per agent:

# one isolated checkout per task, like Conductor workspaces
git worktree add ../myapp-fix-auth -b ai/fix-auth
git worktree add ../myapp-new-onboarding -b ai/new-onboarding

# one agent per worktree, in a named session that survives the terminal closing
tmux new -s fix-auth -c ../myapp-fix-auth
claude        # or codex, or any agent CLI; detach with Ctrl-b then d

tmux new -s onboarding -c ../myapp-new-onboarding
codex

Review is plain git: diff each branch, merge what is good, remove the worktree. The guide to git worktrees for AI coding agents covers naming, cleanup, and per-worktree dependency installs.

Fit: full control, zero new tools. The costs are the ones the apps exist to remove: no unified review surface, manual worktree hygiene, and on a laptop everything dies when the lid closes. A VM fixes the lifetime problem; see keeping Claude Code running after closing your laptop.

Other routes worth knowing

vibe-kanban is a cross-platform open source kanban board that launches as a local web server and drives coding CLIs on your machine; community-maintained since Bloop shut down in April 2026, it remains a reasonable free pick if you accept that risk profile (more in the vibe-kanban alternatives guide). OpenHands is the established open source agent platform, typically run via Docker with a web UI and sandboxed runtime containers, plus Kubernetes deployment with multi-user RBAC as of March 2026: heavier to operate, but a real answer when the requirement is self-hosted and auditable. Cursor's cloud agents run in Cursor's cloud VMs, driven from the Cursor editor, which runs on Windows and Linux; you get Cursor's agent rather than a choice of CLIs. GitHub Copilot's Agent HQ, in public preview for paid Copilot plans since February 2026, orchestrates multiple vendors' agents from GitHub itself on any OS, though as a delegation surface around pull requests, not a live parallel-workspace app.

The gap none of the desktop apps close

Every local option above, Conductor included, is single-player: workspaces live on one person's machine, and a teammate cannot open your session or watch the agent work. A July 2026 LeadDev analysis of 25,264 agent-generated pull requests across 2,361 popular GitHub repositories found that in 79 percent of agentic PRs the same developer both reviewed and modified the agent's contribution, and only about one in eight workflows involved multiple humans. Tooling that isolates each developer reinforces exactly that pattern.

Where AQ fits

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. It sidesteps the OS question entirely: the workspace is in the browser, so macOS, Windows, and Linux are equally first-class, and there is no desktop app to wait for.

The recipe is the same one Conductor proved, relocated to a server and made shared. Agents run as real CLIs (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor Agent, Kimi, Grok, plain shells) in persistent tmux sessions on your team's VM, streamed live to the browser: sessions survive your laptop closing and resume from any device, including your phone. Each workspace gets one isolated git worktree with automatic dependency install and one-click rebase onto main, agents commit and open PRs with per-user GitHub auth, and you log into the CLIs with your own Claude or OpenAI accounts (AQ never marks up model usage). And it is multiplayer where the desktop apps are single-player: teammates open the same workspace and watch the same live session, taking the keyboard only when the session owner approves a control request. Live dev-server previews get shareable links that outsiders can view without an account, and labeling a Linear issue ai-task creates a workspace with status syncing both ways. The AQ vs Conductor comparison covers the head-to-head in detail.

Pricing is two plans: Free is a personal sandbox for one person (AQ creates a private machine in an isolated network, nothing to install, no time limit), and Team is $50 per user per month in early access (standard $200, billed monthly), covering VMs you connect from your own cloud or a dedicated always-on AQ-managed VM, rate locked for your first 12 months.

The honest summary: on Windows or Linux, Emdash is the closest free like-for-like replacement, Claude Code Desktop is the native answer if Claude is your only agent, and DIY costs nothing but your own glue work. AQ is the pick when the parallel-agent workflow should outlive your laptop and be visible to your team, not just to you.