Short positioning. Not a feature-complete matrix.
Spawning one agent per git worktree is a crowded 2026 pattern (Conductor, Cursor 3 Agents window, Claude Code, Superset, Emdash, Claude Squad). Sideboard does that too. The comparison that matters is the orchestration tier: an agent that can reason about other threads, a board where you can see that, and Slack so a coworker can enter the loop — with compute staying on this Mac (corporate VPN, private git, internal APIs).
vs Conductor (Melty)
Conductor’s free Mac app is a polished human board around local worktrees. Their paid product is Conductor Cloud (Pro / Teams): Vercel sandboxes in us-east-1, agents that keep running after you close the laptop, multiplayer, and an API against cloud workspaces. Cloud session data is stored on Conductor’s servers; local sessions stay on disk.
A serious local orchestration tier would compete with that upsell. Sideboard is the option that keeps the fleet on this machine.
| Where agents run | Free: your Mac. Paid: cloud sandbox, off-VPN | Always this Mac — inside the corporate VPN |
|---|---|---|
| Orchestration | Human-oriented local board; programmatic control is the Cloud API | MCP + Global board, on this Mac |
| Team / remote | Cloud multiplayer and shared workspaces | Slack to this Mac; slack_post a review ping; replies come back as info |
| Away from the laptop | Cloud sandbox keeps running | Slack reaches this Mac only while it is awake (opt-in caffeinate). Local schedules fire the same way. |
| Session data | Cloud: Conductor’s servers. Local: your disk | Your Mac. Relay routes Slack chat only |
Work on main in the project folder |
Always a sidecar worktree | Opt-in cowboy (Settings → Advanced; off by default) |
| Lock-in | Sessions live in the app | attach / adopt — move in and out of native CLIs |
Use Conductor when you want their finished Mac workspace UI, or their cloud sandboxes (always-on, off-VPN, paid). Use Sideboard when the fleet should stay on this machine and Slack is how you and a coworker enter the loop.
vs “open Conductor” clones
Several projects aim to recreate Conductor’s local board (worktrees + terminals + diffs). Sideboard’s wedge is different:
- Local orchestration — MCP so an agent can drive the fleet, and a board so you can see it, without a cloud workspace
- Slack to this Mac — inbound to the orchestrator, outbound review pings, replies as information — not a rented sandbox
- Handoff — attach/adopt/Conductor import, not a closed session cage
- Surface split — CLI (zero tokens) vs MCP (judgment) vs desktop (board)
If you only need a TUI/dashboard over claude/codex worktrees, a thinner clone may be enough. If you need orchestration that other agents can drive, on the VPN you already use, start here.
vs YAML workflow runners (e.g. Microsoft Conductor)
Those tools version deterministic multi-agent pipelines in YAML. Sideboard orchestrates live coding sessions in git worktrees. Related category name; different job.
Recurring method still belongs on disk — as a committed Claude Code skill (.claude/skills/<name>/SKILL.md), not a locked DAG. Sideboard /name, Claude Code, and attach load the same file. See Process skills.