Compare · last checked October 2026
Portia vs Superset
Superset runs any CLI agent in parallel worktrees on machines you own, with diff review, PRs, a browser and remote access. It is a desk to run agents from; the plan and the merge are yours.
Superset is a source-available desktop app (Elastic License 2.0) for running many coding agents at once, each in its own git worktree, on your Mac, on hosts you add, or in cloud workspaces. It has presets for more than twenty CLI agents, a diff reviewer, pull requests, a built-in browser, automations and an iOS app for answering an agent while it runs on your own machine.
Like Conductor, it is organised around the task and the person. Superset decides nothing about order or dependencies, runs no gates of its own, and merges nothing: it is where you watch and review.
Portia is the opposite shape: no desktop app, one agent family, and the orchestration is the product. The plan comes from the tracker, the spine lands first, every child is gated on its rebased head, and the result is one PR.
| Portia | Superset | |
|---|---|---|
| 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 the diff reviewer 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 at merge time between workspaces. |
| Unit of work | An epic, or a story big enough to split into children. | A task per workspace. |
| 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 and PR per workspace, reviewed in the app. |
| Where the agents run | Your machine, or a build box you open over SSH. One git worktree per child. | Your Mac (Linux experimental), hosts you add, or cloud workspaces. |
| Which agents | Claude Code, on your own subscription. Workers follow the target repo's CLAUDE.md, skills and settings. | Any CLI agent; presets for more than twenty. |
| 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. |
| 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 per workspace. |
| Gates before landing | Task gate; exit gate, run again on the rebased head; CI; an optional review of each child; the epic gate. | None built in; your agent runs what you tell it to. |
| Who merges | You. Children squash-merge into an integration branch, pinned to the commit their gate passed. Portia never merges to main. | You. |
| 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 each agent 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. | You pay each provider directly, with no markup. |
| 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. | Remote access and an iOS app to a running host; automations. |
| Licence and price | Free. Source on GitHub. | Source-available (ELv2). A free tier; Pro at $20 per user per month. |
What Superset does that Portia doesn't
- Agent-agnostic: Claude Code, Codex and anything else side by side.
- A browser, remote access, automations and a phone app.
- Source you can read.
Choose Superset when
You run agents from several vendors and want one desktop to watch and review them.
Choose Portia when
You want the orchestration itself to be the product: order, tests, gates and one PR, not a desk to run agents from.
Questions
- Does Superset run tests before merging?
- Not on its own. The agent runs what you ask it to; the merge is yours. Portia's exit gate runs on every child's rebased head before it lands, and the epic gate runs every acceptance spec before the PR is marked ready.
Sources
Superset'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.