Orca: The Agent Development Environment for Running AI Coding Agents in Parallel

If you use Claude Code, Codex, or another AI coding agent in your terminal, you have probably hit this wall: the agent is busy on one task, you want to start a second one, and now you are juggling branches, stashing changes, and opening five terminal windows that all look the same.

Orca is a desktop app built to solve exactly that. This article explains what it is, how it differs from Cursor, what it costs, and where it falls short.

What is Orca?

Orca calls itself an ADE, an Agent Development Environment. The idea is simple:

• A traditional IDE is built around one human typing code.
• An ADE is built around you supervising several AI agents that write code at the same time.

In practice, Orca is a desktop app (macOS, Windows, Linux) where every task you start gets:

1. Its own git worktree (an isolated copy of your repo on its own branch)
2. Its own agent terminal (Claude Code, Codex, Gemini, Cursor CLI, and so on)
3. Its own browser tab for previewing the app

A quick primer on git worktrees

Worktrees are the core idea behind Orca, so it is worth a 30-second refresher.

Normally, one repo folder has one checked-out branch. A worktree lets you check out another branch into a separate folder that shares the same git history:

git worktree add ../fix-login-race -b fix-login-race

Now you have two folders, two branches, one repo. No stashing needed.

Orca automates this. Click "+", name your task, pick an agent, and Orca creates a real git worktree and launches the agent inside it. Because these are standard worktrees, you can always cd into one and use plain git.

What does a typical workflow look like?

The Orca docs describe a "first 3-agent session" that sums up the whole product:

1. Add a repo. Point Orca at a local checkout. It uses your default branch (for example origin/main) as the base for new worktrees.
2. Create a worktree. Give the task a name like fix-login-race.
3. Pick an agent. Choose Claude Code, Codex, Cursor CLI, or another supported agent. Orca launches its CLI in the right directory.
4. Race agents. Repeat twice more with different agents and paste the same prompt into each:
   • fix-login-race with Claude Code
   • fix-login-race-2 with Codex
   • fix-login-race-3 with Cursor CLI
5. Split panes so you can watch all three working at once.
6. Review and ship. Open each diff, leave inline comments to send back to the best agent, then commit and push from inside Orca. Delete the losing worktrees in one click.

That loop (add, worktree, agent, split, diff, ship) is essentially the whole product. Everything else is a deeper version of one of those steps.

Key features

Parallel worktrees. Every task is isolated, so five agents can work on the same repo without overwriting each other.

Bring your own agent. Orca ships preconfigured for a long list of CLI agents, including Claude Code, Codex, Gemini, Cursor CLI, GitHub Copilot, OpenCode, Amp, Goose, Cline, Kiro, and Qwen Code, and any other CLI agent can be added.

Annotate AI diffs. Leave markdown comments on specific diff lines, batch them, and send them back to the agent as feedback. You can also inspect CI, resolve conflicts, and open PRs in the app.

Design Mode. Each worktree gets a real Chromium window. Click a UI element and Orca sends its HTML, CSS, and a cropped screenshot to your agent. Useful for "fix this button" style front-end work.

Terminal. GPU-rendered, with unlimited splits, scrollback that survives restarts, and scrollback search. On first launch it can import your Ghostty settings.

Editor. It includes a VS Code-style (Monaco) editor with autosave, so you can make manual edits without leaving the app.

SSH worktrees. Run agents on a powerful remote machine with full file editing, git, and terminals, plus auto-reconnect and port forwarding.

GitHub, Linear, and Jira integration. Browse PRs and issues, open a worktree straight from a task, and review PRs without switching apps.

Orca CLI. Agents can drive Orca too, for example creating worktrees themselves, which enables orchestration and scheduled automations.

Usage tracking. See Claude and Codex usage and rate-limit reset times, and swap between Codex accounts.

Mobile companion. iOS and Android apps let you check agent status, get notifications, and keep terminal work moving when you are away from your desk.

Is Orca like Cursor?

Short answer: they overlap, but they solve different problems.

Cursor is an AI-first code editor (a fork of VS Code). The AI lives inside the editor: autocomplete as you type, chat in a sidebar, and an agent mode. You are the main author, and the AI assists you in one workspace. You pay Cursor for access to the models.

Orca is an orchestration layer for CLI agents. It does not provide its own model. Instead, it runs the agents you already have (including Cursor's own CLI agent) side by side, each in its own isolated branch, and gives you tools to review and merge their output.

A useful way to think about it:

• If you mostly write code yourself and want AI help as you type, Cursor (or a similar AI editor) is the more natural fit.
• If you mostly delegate tasks to agents and your job is increasingly to review, compare, and merge their output, Orca is designed for that.

Pricing: is Orca free?

Yes. The Orca app is free and open source under the MIT license. There is no paid tier listed on the website.

There are two things to be aware of:

1. You pay for the agents. Orca is not a model. You need your own Claude, Codex, Gemini, or other subscription or API key. Running three agents in parallel can use your quota roughly three times as fast.
2. Enterprise is "contact us." There is an Enterprise page covering security reviews, self-hosting, rollout help, and SOC 2 readiness, but no public pricing. You have to email the team.

Installing Orca

Download builds for each platform from the download page or GitHub Releases. On macOS you can also use Homebrew:

brew install --cask stablyai/orca/orca

A few notes:

• On first launch, Orca offers to import your ~/.claude, ~/.codex, and Ghostty settings.
• On Linux, pick the AppImage if you want automatic updates. The CLI is named orca-ide so it does not clash with the GNOME Orca screen reader.
• The app auto-updates on a stable channel, with optional release-candidate builds for early features.

Who should try Orca?

Orca is worth a look if:

• You already use one or more CLI coding agents and feel limited by running one task at a time.
• You want to compare how different agents handle the same bug.
• You want a Claude Code or Codex workflow on Windows or Linux with a proper UI around it.
• You like running agents on a remote machine and checking on them from your phone.

You can probably skip it if you rarely use agents, prefer AI autocomplete while you type, or want a single all-in-one subscription that handles the models for you.

Links

• GitHub: https://github.com/stablyai/orca