🪴 Brain

Orca

4 min read

Orca

🗒️ stablyai/orca — “the ADE for working with a fleet of parallel agents.” A free, open-source desktop app (macOS/Windows/Linux) that runs Codex, Claude Code, OpenCode, Pi and any CLI agent side by side, each in its own git worktree, tracked in one place. Runs on your own subscriptions. MIT.

🚀 The core move: fan one prompt across five agents, each isolated in its own worktree, then compare the results and merge the winner.

Description

🧩 What it does:

  • Parallel worktrees — one prompt, N agents, N isolated git worktrees; compare and merge the winner.
  • Mobile companion — monitor and steer agents from your phone, get notified when one finishes, send follow-ups from anywhere (iOS App Store, Android APK).
  • Terminal splits — Ghostty-class terminals with WebGL rendering, infinite splits, scrollback that survives restarts.
  • Design Mode — click any UI element in a real Chromium window to send its HTML, CSS and a cropped screenshot straight into the agent’s prompt.
  • GitHub & Linear, native — browse PRs, issues and project boards in-app; open a worktree from any task and review without a context switch.
  • SSH worktrees — run agents on a beefy remote box with full file editing, git and terminals; auto-reconnect and port forwarding included.
  • Annotate AI diffs — drop comments on any diff line and ship them back to the agent; review, edit and commit without leaving Orca.
  • Drag files to agents — VS Code’s editor with autosave everywhere; drag files or images into an agent prompt.
  • Orca CLI — agents drive Orca too: orca worktree create, snapshot, click, fill.
  • Also in the box — quick open across worktrees/files/agents, Claude & Codex usage and rate-limit tracking with account hot-swap, Computer Use, notifications and unread state.

Works with any CLI agent — if it runs in a terminal, it runs in Orca. Explicitly supported: Claude Code, Codex, Grok, Cursor, Copilot, OpenCode, Amp, Antigravity, Pi, Hermes Agent, Devin, Goose, Cline, Continue, Droid, Kimi, Kiro, Qwen Code and ~15 more.

Download or use

# macOS
brew install --cask stablyai/orca/orca
 
# Arch Linux (AUR)
yay -S stably-orca-bin

Or grab a build from onOrca.dev/download — macOS (ARM/Intel) .dmg, Windows .exe, Linux AppImage. Headless Linux server? orca serve plus the headless guide.

Mobile pairs with the desktop app via a relay that lives in the same repo under cloud/.

Reasoning for

The interesting bit is not “an IDE for agents” — it’s that worktree isolation is the default unit of work. Running five agents on the same checkout is how you get corrupted state and unmergeable diffs; giving each its own worktree turns parallel agents from a stunt into a workflow, and makes “compare and merge the winner” an actual review step rather than a hope.

Two features I’d use immediately:

  • Design Mode — click an element in a live browser and the agent receives its HTML, CSS and a cropped screenshot. That’s the shortest path yet from “this looks wrong” to a prompt with real context, and it beats describing the problem in prose.
  • Usage tracking with account hot-swap — seeing Claude and Codex rate-limit resets in one place, and switching accounts without re-logging in, addresses the same quota-juggling pain OmniRoute attacks from the gateway side.

⚠️ Caveats worth noting: it ships daily (the changelog is “the real feature list”), it’s a desktop Electron-class app rather than something you can put on a server, and there’s anonymous telemetry — documented, opt-out available.

Alternatives considered

  • herdr — the same fleet problem solved terminal-natively: one Rust binary, background server, panes marked working/blocked/idle, SSH reattach. Choose herdr for headless/remote and keyboard-first work, Orca for GUI review, diffs, Design Mode and phone steering.
  • Cursor / VS Code + terminals — familiar, but no worktree isolation per agent and no cross-agent tracking.
  • Cloud agent platforms (Devin, Codex Cloud) — run someone else’s runtime on someone else’s box; Orca runs your subscriptions on your machine.

Resources

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