Compare · last checked October 2026
Portia vs Conductor
Conductor gives each task a workspace with its own worktree, terminal, diff and PR, and lets you run Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and OpenCode side by side. You plan, review and merge each one.
Conductor is a Mac app for running several coding agents at once. Each task gets a workspace: a git worktree and branch, with the agent's chat, a terminal, the diff, checks and a pull-request step attached. Conductor Cloud, on its paid plans, runs workspaces in microVMs so they can carry on after you close the laptop. There is an iOS app for those.
The unit is the task, and the person is the orchestrator: you decide what to start, you review each workspace, you merge each branch. Conductor's own guides suggest giving every session a narrow prompt with the expected outcome, constraints and a validation command.
Portia starts one level up. It takes the epic, decides the order from the tickets' dependencies, lands the shared code first, writes the acceptance specs before any feature work, and gates every child onto one integration branch. You review one PR at the end, and the parked questions along the way.
| Portia | Conductor | |
|---|---|---|
| Who proves the work is right, and when | The tests, written first and signed off by a person before any wave; then the gate on each child's rebased head; then you, at the one PR. | You, per workspace, in its diff view after the agent is done. |
| Where rework shows up | At the gate, per child, before it lands: a failed exit gate retries with the failure in its brief. Siblings never touch the same file, so there is nothing to reconcile at the end. | In your review of each workspace, and when two workspaces' branches meet on main. |
| Unit of work | An epic, or a story big enough to split into children. | A task you type. One workspace per task. |
| What you get back | One reviewed pull request for the whole feature, with a ledger of every child and the evidence for each scenario in its description. | A branch, diff and PR per workspace, reviewed one workspace at a time. |
| Where the agents run | Your machine, or a build box you open over SSH. One git worktree per child. | Your Mac, or Conductor Cloud microVMs on paid plans. |
| Which agents | Claude Code, on your own subscription. Workers follow the target repo's CLAUDE.md, skills and settings. | Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and OpenCode, bundled. |
| Planning | A wave table drawn from the tickets and shown to you first. Written back into the tickets, with each dependency as a blocker link. | Yours: what to start, and in what order. |
| Tests before features | The spine writes every acceptance scenario as a failing spec. You sign off before any wave starts. | If you ask for them. |
| Isolation between tasks | A worktree, branch, port and database per child. No two children in a wave touch the same file. | A worktree and branch per workspace; CONDUCTOR_PORT gives each a port range. |
| Gates before landing | Task gate; exit gate, run again on the rebased head; CI; an optional review of each child; the epic gate. | Checks you configure per workspace. |
| Who merges | You. Children squash-merge into an integration branch, pinned to the commit their gate passed. Portia never merges to main. | You, per workspace. |
| Tracker | Jira or GitHub Issues. | None required. |
| Model choice | Per child, from its tier: a cheaper model for routine children, a stronger one for the hard ones. | Whatever the agent you pick supports. |
| Spend and capacity | Caps per worker, per wave and per epic. Waves are sized from free memory and the other runs on the machine. | Your agent subscriptions. Conductor does not resell model usage. |
| Unattended, and resuming | Parks with one question instead of guessing. Detached workers outlive the session, with a stall detector; portia resume picks a run back up. | Cloud workspaces keep running; local ones need your Mac awake. |
| Licence and price | Free. Source on GitHub. | Proprietary Mac app. A free tier, then Pro and Teams plans. |
What Conductor does that Portia doesn't
- A finished app: terminal, diff, checks and PR in one window.
- Four agents, not one.
- Cloud sandboxes, an iOS app and team features.
Choose Conductor when
You want to run and watch several agents on separate tasks and review each by hand, on a Mac.
Choose Portia when
The tasks belong to one feature. Portia plans the order, lands the shared code first, writes the acceptance tests, and gates every child onto one branch.
Questions
- Could I run Portia's workers inside Conductor?
- Not usefully. Portia creates and tears down its own worktrees, ports and databases per child, and lands each one itself. Conductor expects to own the workspace.
- Is Conductor local-only?
- No. Its docs describe both local Mac workspaces and cloud sandboxes on paid plans.
Sources
Conductor's column comes from the pages below, read in October 2026. Portia's comes from its README and reference. If a cell is wrong, open an issue.