Conductor is a polished Mac app that runs many agents in parallel, each in its own worktree workspace, with review, PR and merge in one window. Pilothouse is an open-source daemon that leaves your agents where they are and adds rules, an inbox and your phone.
Conductor, from Melty, is a proprietary macOS app for running Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and OpenCode agents in parallel. Each task gets a workspace with a branch, a git worktree, setup scripts, a terminal, diff review and a PR flow; it ships its own Claude Code and Codex and uses your subscriptions or API keys. Paid plans add cloud workspaces that keep running with your Mac off, multiplayer and an iPhone app that can read chats, send messages and create workspaces through Conductor’s end-to-end encrypted relay.
| Feature | Pilothouse | Conductor |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Single Go binary: daemon, CLI, terminal inbox, phone web app | Mac app: parallel agents, one worktree workspace each; cloud workspaces on paid plans |
| License | Yes: Apache-2.0 | No: Proprietary |
| Price | Free | Free locally; Pro $50/mo; Teams $60/user/mo |
| Platforms | macOS, Linux (Windows on the roadmap) | macOS app; iPhone app; no Windows or Linux yet |
| Agents | Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Grok Build | Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, OpenCode |
| Keep your terminal and how you launch agents | Yes: Yes — official hooks (OpenCode: a plugin; Grok Build: personal hooks); any terminal, even inside tmux or herdr | No: No — agents run inside Conductor workspaces |
| Your rules before every tool call | Yes: YAML + CEL, one-tap rules from approval cards, presets; any deny wins | No: No rules; a tool-approval on/off setting |
| Approve from your phone | Yes: Yes — each device signs its decisions | No: Not documented |
| Answer questions / approve plans from your phone | Yes: Claude Code questions and plans, OpenCode questions; Codex questions shown, answered in its terminal | No: Not documented on the phone |
| Reply to a running session from your phone | Yes: Sessions started with pilothouse run, Claude Code sessions and OpenCode | Yes: Yes — send messages, pick models, stop agents |
| Live terminal from your phone | Partly: For sessions started with pilothouse run | No: Not documented on the phone |
| See what the session did | Yes: Session report with proof (tests, lint, build, files, commit), activity feed and diffs (Claude Code, Codex) | Yes: Yes — chats, code review and PR status |
| Token use and cost | Yes: Tokens and estimated cost (Claude Code, Codex), daily budget alerts | Partly: Context usage; a team token-usage heatmap; no budgets |
| Phone notifications | Yes: Web Push, Telegram, ntfy (with buttons), Slack/Discord webhooks, desktop | Partly: Desktop notifications; phone push not documented |
| Presence-aware (no phone buzz while you’re at the desk) | Yes: Yes — OS idle time; manual override | No: Not documented |
| Answer from a chat app | Yes: Telegram, two-way: buttons, question options, replies | No: No |
| Native mobile app | No: No — an installable web app (PWA) | Yes: iPhone app (Pro); no Android |
| Works without an account | Yes: No account | No: Conductor account, required to pair the iPhone |
| How the phone reaches your machine | Your own Tailscale (HTTPS via Tailscale Serve), no ports opened. Telegram needs no Tailscale. | Conductor’s relay, end-to-end encrypted |
| Worktree tasks | Yes: pilothouse task new → worktree + branch + agent; .pilothouse/task.yaml | Yes: Yes — the core model, with setup scripts |
| Start a task from your phone | Yes: Yes — start it, review the diff, ship it as a PR | Yes: Yes — create workspaces from the iPhone |
| Several machines in one view | Yes: Yes — link machines to one hub over your tailnet | Partly: Each paired Mac shows up in the iPhone app |
Setup and archive scripts, a port per workspace, diff comments, checks, checkpoints, PR and merge. Pilothouse tasks give you a worktree, a branch, a diff and a PR, and stop there.
Agents keep running while your Mac sleeps or is off, and teammates can join. Pilothouse runs on your machine only.
A native app over an encrypted relay, no Tailscale needed. Pilothouse ships a web app.
Frequent releases, team plans, SSO and SCIM.
Pilothouse checks YAML/CEL rules and presets on every pre-tool hook. Conductor documents a tool-approval on/off setting and notes that agents run without sandboxing.
Permission requests, questions and plans reach your phone, Telegram or ntfy while you’re away, with the diff, risk labels and the rule that fired.
Pilothouse uses each agent’s hooks, so agents started in any terminal or IDE are covered. Conductor runs agents inside its own workspaces.
Apache-2.0, macOS and Linux, nothing to sign in to. Conductor is proprietary, Mac-only and needs an account to pair the iPhone.
Facts about Conductor checked on 24 October 2026 from: conductor.build, Conductor pricing, Conductor remote control docs, Conductor FAQ, Conductor 0.90: iOS. Spotted something out of date? Tell us.
It doesn't replace your terminal or your agents. Try the phone app with pretend agents first, or install, runpilothouse setup, and keep working.
pilothouse democurl -fsSL https://pilothouse.dev/install.sh | shbrew install sabr-software/tap/pilothousethen run pilothouse setup