Emdash Free

What it does

Emdash is a free, open-source desktop app (Apache-2.0, built by a YC W26 team) that lets you run several AI coding agents in parallel, each in its own isolated Git worktree. Instead of betting on one agent's approach, you can fan a task out to multiple agents, watch progress side by side, review the diffs each one produces, and merge whichever result you like.

What is inside

• A worktree manager that creates an isolated branch per agent run so concurrent experiments never collide
• Auto-detection of installed CLI agent providers on your machine
• A review/merge UI for comparing competing agent runs before merging
• Integrations with common issue trackers so tasks can be pulled straight from your backlog

Works with

Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, OpenCode, Amp, Devin, Qwen Code, Droid, and GitHub Copilot as agent providers; Linear, GitHub, Jira, GitLab, Asana, Featurebase, Monday.com, Forgejo, and Plain as issue trackers.

How to install or connect

brew install --cask emdash

DMG installers are also available for macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel), an installer/portable EXE for Windows, and AppImage/DEB/RPM packages for Linux x64 and ARM64, all from the GitHub releases page.

Maintenance and safety

Actively maintained (5.8k stars, 597 forks, 10,000+ commits, 71 open issues). Emdash itself stores data locally in SQLite with optional telemetry, but actual code/data handling depends on whichever agent provider you run, so review each provider's own privacy policy before pointing it at sensitive repositories. Because each run happens in its own worktree, a misbehaving agent is contained to that branch rather than your main working copy.

Who should use it

Developers already using one or more terminal coding agents who want a structured way to run several of them on the same task in parallel, compare isolated worktree outputs, and cherry-pick the best one before merging. It particularly suits teams juggling more than one agent provider who currently do this comparison manually with separate clones or branches, and who'd rather see the runs side by side in one interface.