Stably Orca vs Baton

Detailed side-by-side comparison to help you choose the right tool

Stably Orca

🔴Developer

developer-tools

Desktop AI orchestrator by Stably that runs multiple coding agents side-by-side, each in its own isolated git worktree, tracked in one place.

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Starting Price

$0 (self-hosted)

🔴Developer

developer-tools

A macOS menu bar app that tracks every Claude Code and Codex session on your machine and tells you which AI coding agent is waiting on you right now.

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Starting Price

$0 (self-hosted)

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Feature	Stably Orca	Baton
Category	developer-tools	developer-tools
Pricing Plans	1 listed plan	1 listed plan
Starting Price	$0 (self-hosted)	$0 (self-hosted)
Key Features	• Run multiple coding agents side-by-side, each in its own isolated git worktree • Fan one prompt across agents in parallel and merge the winner • Works with any CLI agent (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Copilot, Cline, and many more)	• Menu bar count of AI agent sessions waiting on you, updated in under a second via FSEvents file watching • Unified view of Claude Code sessions and Codex threads, grouped by waiting, working, and done • Click-to-jump: raises the Claude session's Terminal.app tab or opens Codex threads via codex:// deep links

✓Wraps any CLI agent — vendor-neutral so it stays useful as the coding-agent market churns
✓Isolated git worktrees per agent make parallel experimentation genuinely safe
✓Design Mode collapses the screenshot-plus-CSS-plus-prompt loop into a single click
✓SSH remote worktrees let expensive agent runs live on beefier hardware
✓Mobile companion means you can monitor and steer agents without being at the desk

✗Desktop-only — no browser or hosted control plane if your primary workstation is locked down
✗No MCP support currently — integration is CLI and Orca-CLI-based
✗Running multiple frontier agents in parallel multiplies your token bill quickly
✗Design Mode requires the Chromium browser inside Orca; it does not observe external browsers
✗Newer entrant — configuration and workflow patterns are still solidifying compared to established IDEs

✓Free, open source (MIT), no telemetry, nothing leaves the machine
✓Sub-second updates via FSEvents; negligible CPU/battery cost
✓Handles both Claude Code and Codex in one unified view
✓Click-to-jump saves the biggest actual cost of multi-agent work: finding the right window
✓One-line install with an isolated venv — clean uninstall too

✗macOS only; no Linux or Windows menu bar equivalent
✗Requires Python 3.9+ on the host (3.11+ for Codex automation tracking)
✗Only tracks Claude Code and Codex — other coding agents (Cursor, Cline, Aider) not supported
✗No push notifications to phone / other devices; menu bar only
✗Read-only by design — cannot send input back to sessions

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