[HN Gopher] Show HN: Conductor, a Mac app that lets you run a bu...
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Show HN: Conductor, a Mac app that lets you run a bunch of Claude
Codes at once
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1945870105109246401.html
https://x.com/charliebholtz/status/1945870105109246401
Author : Charlieholtz
Score : 98 points
Date : 2025-07-17 15:43 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (conductor.build)
(TXT) w3m dump (conductor.build)
| jamil7 wrote:
| Oh cool, I was already doing this with git worktrees but a ui for
| it would be handy.
| Charlieholtz wrote:
| Let me know how it goes!
| WalterSear wrote:
| You might want to mention it's silicon only.
| Charlieholtz wrote:
| Sorry about that, working on Intel right now!
| dgritsko wrote:
| This is awesome. A couple of suggestions:
|
| - It'd be great to change the default branch used for creating
| new workspaces.
|
| - I'd like the ability to add custom tools to the "Open in..."
| menu.
| Charlieholtz wrote:
| Ah yeah! Which IDE do you use?
|
| > It'd be great to change the default branch used for creating
| new workspaces. Yeah you can actually change this now! If you
| click the repo name you can make changes to the "setup script".
| If you added `git checkout -b "branch name"` it would run that
| on every new workspace instance.
| dgritsko wrote:
| At the moment it's mostly Cursor or VS Code, but I was
| actually thinking of SourceTree. I'd like to look at the
| pending changes and manage the commits myself, and I could do
| that if I could add "open -a SourceTree ." as a custom
| command. I didn't see a place to edit a setup script, is that
| just on the filesystem?
| Charlieholtz wrote:
| Got it! If you click the repository name in the left
| sidebar, you should see a field for setup script.
| dgritsko wrote:
| Ah, excellent - appreciate the help! I'm already getting
| a ton of value out of this tool, thanks for sharing!
| Charlieholtz wrote:
| wooo that's awesome to hear! keep the feedback coming!
| dgritsko wrote:
| FWIW, this is what I wound up with - keeps the original
| branch name but ensures that it's based on the latest
| from the "dev" branch:
|
| orig_branch=$(git branch --show-current) && git checkout
| dev && git pull && git branch -D "$orig_branch" && git
| checkout -b "$orig_branch"
| janpieterz wrote:
| Love it! Even just simply freeing my main branch would be a big
| win so I can keep working as well.
|
| But no way to find out if there's any data sent to your servers
| etc, unless I'm missing some links?
| Charlieholtz wrote:
| Love to hear it! Your messages are just between you and Claude
| Code -- it all runs on your local Claude Code installation via
| the SDK (https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/claude-code/sdk)
| lachances wrote:
| Any way to have it not require full write access to your entire
| GitHub account?
| Charlieholtz wrote:
| Yes, we're working on this!
|
| Right now the app uses GitHub's OAuth sign in
| (https://docs.github.com/en/apps/oauth-apps/building-oauth-
| ap...) which unfortunately doesn't allow for fine-grained
| permissions (it will only have access to organization code if
| you explicitly grant it) . We're switching our sign-in to a
| GitHub App so we can make the permissions fine-grained.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Looks cool, but I don't quite get it? What happens if I just open
| a new terminal window and start Claude in that?
| simonbw wrote:
| That works when you just do it once. Where you can run into
| problems is when you do that twice. One instance might change a
| file one way, and the other might change it in a conflicting
| way, then you have two Claudes getting confused about the state
| of that file and it gets messy. You can solve this by checking
| out multiple copies of your repo and having only one instance
| of Claude working per copy. This app seems like it just
| provides you with a nice UI for doing that.
| lmeyerov wrote:
| Yes that's how I do Claude code manually, git branch per
| terminal window, and very rarely multiple agents on the same
| branch
|
| It mostly works, except we don't have a clean flow for
| docker: shared system daemon & repository means need to
| manually tag & run by branch/project (docker compose -p ...),
| which is friction for the LLM and even more setup than we
| want
|
| As a heavy multi session Claude Code user, this may be what
| finally converts me to cloud IDEs...
| maxverse wrote:
| Who does your design? I absolutely love this aesthetic, both this
| product, and your site (chorus.sh). What is this even called? I
| went for a similar vibe with tinylogger.com, but def didn't have
| your skills to pull it off.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| corus.sh looks like a modified bento grid layout:
| https://tailwindcss.com/plus/ui-blocks/marketing/sections/be...
| Charlieholtz wrote:
| Ah thank you! Our designer is Julian Kelly (https://jfk.works).
| He's amazing, and worked on Messenger at Meta -- a background
| which has been surprisingly helpful since everything we're
| working on is a spin on chatting.
| julianfkelly wrote:
| Hi, appreciate the note! I'm Julian, I do all the design at
| Melty. I try to design our software to be functional, visually
| subtle, and chromatically warm. I don't know that the aesthetic
| has a name, but I've spent a lot of time studying manuscripts
| from the early middle ages so that might have seeped in - the
| logo for Conductor is actually a variant of insular majuscule
| (you can see the ductus in the animation)
| abdullin wrote:
| Is it similar to what OpenAI Codex does with isolated
| environments per agent run?
| Charlieholtz wrote:
| We create an isolated git worktree locally on your machine --
| whereas Codex (I believe) is running a container on the cloud
| davidbalbert wrote:
| We do our dev on Linux desktops using VS Code ssh remotes from
| our Macs. Is this possible with Conductor?
| rapatel0 wrote:
| Can you intelligently bake in Claude code router? That would help
| both with token budget but more importantly multiplexing between
| different models.
| simonbw wrote:
| I have been imagining something like this would be perfect for
| working with Claude Code. I tried a couple other apps but they
| seemed to change too much without providing enough value for that
| change. This feels like just a nice clean simple extension of how
| Claude code already works that solves my most common pain points
| in the workflow.
|
| Anyways, excellent work!
| Charlieholtz wrote:
| thanks so much!!
| freedomben wrote:
| Cool idea, and I'm definitely not in the target market (I'm a
| Linux user and also very hesitant to adopt proprietary tools to
| my important workflows), but something like this could be useful.
| Right now though it's pretty easy to run each in a different tmux
| window and check on it, but once I have about 3 or more running
| at a time it's very easy to forget about one and have it paused
| waiting for confirmation. A tool like this to add a dashboard of
| sorts would be nice. Definitely interesting to think about!
| myflash13 wrote:
| I was really excited to try this but this does NOT work the way I
| expected. I wanted a simple git worktree manager for my existing,
| already-checked-out repository. Instead, it requests Github
| permissions and clones the repo from Github. This is bad, because
| you need to run all the dependency installs, etc. for every
| workspace before being able to test anything. In other words it's
| like Codex or Cursor Background Agents, except worse, because
| it's on your machine. The reason I don't use Codex or Background
| Agents is because my project has way too many dependencies and
| would take way too long (and too complicated) to install
| everything required to have an isolated running instance, plus
| there would be DNS conflicts, external API conflicts, among other
| issues.
|
| What I do want is simple git worktree management for an already-
| checked-out repo on my machine, no Github permissions or
| dependency re-installation (copying node_modules, etc.).
| zachrip wrote:
| I tried out git worktrees recently and while they do what's on
| the tin, I really didn't like them as much as I thought I
| would. I actually like the way cursor does it despite the fact
| that it is a VM - I wish I could have their same UI/UX but with
| local worktrees.
| pjm331 wrote:
| Yes I had a similar experience. the thing that tripped me up
| with git worktrees, which is maybe obvious in retrospect, is
| that they don't include things that are not tracked by git -
| e.g. .env.development.local
|
| So starting a new worktree requires additional setup and
| isn't as simple as just checking out a new branch
| js2 wrote:
| Could you group the main repo and its worktrees under a
| common parent directory that contains your
| .env.development.local?
| jacksondc wrote:
| Hi, creator here. If you want to copy node_modules instead of
| reinstalling, you can click on the repo and add a setup script
| that does the copy. Sorry it's a bit obscure--we're working on
| making this easier!
|
| Would love to discuss more what kind of testing setup you're
| looking for, want to shoot me an email at jackson@melty.sh?
| jbentley1 wrote:
| Crystal is similar and works with existing checked out repos
| https://github.com/stravu/crystal
| itsalotoffun wrote:
| Full read-write access required to all your Github account's
| repos. Not just code. Settings, deploy keys. The works. Full
| access to your organisation settings. Not a privacy policy in
| sight. Zero disclosure of data practices.
|
| You are INSANE to authorize this app on anything other than
| throwaway code.
|
| @charlieholtz care to comment?
| Charlieholtz wrote:
| Hi! Right now the app uses GitHub's OAuth sign in
| (https://docs.github.com/en/apps/oauth-apps/building-oauth-
| ap...) which unfortunately doesn't allow for fine-grained
| permissions.
|
| It will only have access to organization code if you explicitly
| grant it. We're working on switching our sign-in to a GitHub
| App so we can make the permissions fine-grained.
| atlgator wrote:
| Is it Claude Codes or Claudes Code?
| Charlieholtz wrote:
| Claudes' Codes?!
| hoppp wrote:
| Its for mac only? But isn't it just an API wrapper?
| Charlieholtz wrote:
| Yes Mac only (for now)
| buremba wrote:
| This is pretty cool, here are few feedbacks:
|
| - I switch in between planning and execution in the middle of the
| conversation using Terminal a lot, it would be nice to have it
| here as well rather than defining how I want Claude to think in
| advance.
|
| - Entering messages when the agents can result in task lists to
| save time.
|
| I'm also experimenting different UX with CC, here is Claude Code
| running in Slack if anybody is interested. https://peerbot.ai
| Charlieholtz wrote:
| Thank you! Yes, I agree, we're adding plan mode soon. For now I
| find Opus responds reliably to "plan this out and don't make
| any changes."
|
| > - Entering messages when the agents can result in task lists
| to save time.
|
| Ah yes, queuing coming soon too! Do you prefer if the queued
| messages send when Claude is finished or interrupt it?
| jbentley1 wrote:
| Crystal can do all of this and more, and unlike Conductor is open
| source.
|
| https://github.com/stravu/crystal
| lvl155 wrote:
| So this is why Claude Code is so slow now. I am all for these but
| not at the cost of other more casual users. I never had to worry
| about Sonnet use but even that is not guaranteed. Forget Opus.
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(page generated 2025-07-20 23:00 UTC)