Conductor Alternatives for Windows and Linux Developers

Updated November 5, 2026 · first published August 11, 2026 · by the AQ team

Conductor is joining Meta, and as of November 4, 2026 there is no route onto Conductor from Windows or Linux: new sign-ups and app downloads closed on November 4, the app has only ever shipped for the Mac, and Conductor Cloud goes read-only on Friday, November 13 and shuts down on Friday, November 20, when deletion of Cloud user data begins. If you used Conductor Cloud, export your data now from Settings → Account → Export data and right-click any cloud workspace you still need and choose "Transfer to local"; active subscribers will get a refund, with no amount or date given. The local Mac app gets new models and critical fixes until early 2027 and then winds down. Source: Conductor's announcement, as of November 2026.

For a Windows or Linux developer, the workflow Conductor made popular (several coding agents in parallel, each in its own git worktree, one place to review) is available four ways: Emdash, an open source cross-platform desktop app with nearly the same design; the Claude Code desktop app, if Claude is your only agent; a do-it-yourself setup with git worktrees and tmux; or AQ, which runs real agent CLIs like Claude Code and Codex in persistent sessions on a VM in your own cloud account or a dedicated machine AQ manages, so the OS on your desk stops mattering and teammates can open the same live terminal.

What should Conductor Cloud users do before it shuts down?

Whatever you move to next, do these first. The Conductor details are from Conductor's announcement, as of November 2026.

1. Export your data. Settings → Account → Export data downloads everything. Cloud workspaces stay readable and exportable after November 13 and are deleted from November 20.
2. Transfer what you still use. Right-click a cloud workspace and choose "Transfer to local" to move it and its chats to a Mac. If you have no Mac, rely on the export and on pushed branches.
3. Push every branch. Agent commits that were never pushed live only in the cloud workspace.
4. List the sessions that must keep running when your laptop closes. On Windows or Linux this is the main question: a desktop app stops when the machine sleeps, so long runs need a VM, either one you manage or one a platform runs for you.
5. Compare replacements on the same five points: where execution happens, whether teammates can watch or steer a live session, which agent CLIs it runs, how preview and review work, and how much of the infrastructure you control.

The Conductor alternatives guide covers the cloud options, including AQ and Aether, in more detail, and the Conductor Cloud shutdown guide covers exporting your data and moving to AQ step by step.

What you are replacing: Conductor's recipe

Conductor (conductor.build) runs Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and OpenCode agents in parallel on a Mac, per its own docs as of November 2026. 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.

From July 30, 2026, Conductor also offered Conductor Cloud: workspaces in hosted sandboxes that kept working when you closed the app, with shared workspaces for teammates, an API, and later an iOS app. It was always driven from the Mac app, the iOS app, or the API, so it never opened Conductor to Windows or Linux desktops, and it closes on November 20, 2026.

The question, then, is which ingredients you need on your actual operating system.

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 November 2026. It is an Apache 2.0 open source desktop app 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 builds for macOS, Windows (x64), and Linux (x64 and ARM64), works with agent CLIs including Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, OpenCode, Amp, Devin, and GitHub Copilot per its repository, and can connect over SSH to a dev server or cloud VM.

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 desktop app covers much of Conductor's ground natively on non-Mac platforms through its Code tab. As of November 2026, per Anthropic's docs, it ships for macOS, Windows (x64 and ARM64), and Linux in beta (apt and .deb for Ubuntu and Debian), and it runs several sessions in parallel, each of which can run in its own 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

Pane (runpane.com), Nimbalyst (nimbalyst.com) and Vicoa (vicoa.ai) also ship desktop apps for Windows and Linux that run Claude Code, Codex and other agents in parallel, per their own sites checked November 5, 2026: Pane is free and AGPL-3.0, Nimbalyst's app is free with a paid shared team wiki in beta, and Vicoa's Pro plan adds sharing sessions with viewers and commenters. The Conductor alternatives guide compares them.

vibe-kanban is a cross-platform open source kanban board that drives coding CLIs from a local web server; as of November 2026 its repository says Vibe Kanban is sunsetting, so it is a weak landing spot for anyone leaving a tool that is winding down (more in the vibe-kanban alternatives guide). OpenHands is an open source platform for software engineering agents; as of November 2026 its managed service is OpenHands Cloud and licensed self-hosting comes with OpenHands Enterprise, per its docs. Cursor's cloud agents run in isolated VMs in Cursor's cloud and can be started from the Cursor desktop app (which runs on Windows and Linux), the web, the iOS app, or Slack, per Cursor's docs; you get Cursor's agent rather than a choice of CLIs. Aether (runaether.dev) runs Claude Code, Codex, or OpenCode on your own provider account in a per-task cloud microVM that you can watch and SSH into, per its site as of November 2026; it is browser-based, so the desktop OS does not matter.

The gap none of the desktop apps close

Every desktop option above, local 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, OpenCode, Kimi, Grok, and others) in persistent sessions on your team's VM, streamed live to the browser: sessions keep running when your laptop closes and resume from any device, including your phone. Each work item gets one isolated git worktree on its own branch, agents commit and open PRs with each person's own GitHub access, and you sign in to each CLI with your own account. AQ imports Conductor workspaces, branches, scripts and Claude Code and Codex chats from one command pasted on the Mac (see the migration guide). 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.

Moving from Conductor takes one command: import your Conductor workspaces, and each one becomes a work item on the same branch with its Claude Code and Codex chats continuing in AQ. The importer runs on the Mac where Conductor is installed; after that, you work from any OS.

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 AQ Pro 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.