What is Daintree?
Daintree, built by Greg Priday and formerly called Canopy, is an Electron app for macOS, Windows and Linux that runs coding-agent command-line tools in parallel. Each task gets its own git worktree (a separate branch and checkout of the same repository) and its own terminal, so agents never overwrite each other. It runs the real agent binaries with your existing login and subscription; 17 are built in, including Claude Code, Codex, Antigravity, OpenCode, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Aider and Goose.
Around the terminals it adds a state view that reads each agent's output to sort runs into working, waiting and finished, a Review Hub for diffs, commits and pull requests, a local MCP server with 36 tools that lets one agent launch and watch others, and an optional phone relay for answering agent questions. It is Apache 2.0 licensed, needs no account and released v0.51.0 on 13 November 2026.
Is Daintree worth it?
Daintree solves the practical problem that appears the moment you run a second coding agent: two agents in one checkout trample each other's changes. Giving every task its own worktree fixes that, and Daintree wraps it with what you need next, a single view of which agent is blocked on you, a diff review per worktree and a pull request flow. Because it launches the real CLIs rather than proxying them, your Claude Code or Codex subscription, settings and login work unchanged.
The documentation is unusually frank about limits. Agent state is read heuristically from terminal output, window titles and process trees, and the README warns it can be wrong. The site states that a worktree is git isolation, not a sandbox: agents still run as your user and can run any command your account can, so real isolation has to come from Docker, a VM or a remote host you configure. The MCP server is off to outside clients until you enable it, binds to localhost, has four authorisation tiers and logs every call locally; plugins run code with no confinement.
The project's shape is the trade-off. In the 30 days to 13 November 2026 it merged 1,769 pull requests from 14 contributors, and it has shipped v0.49.0, v0.50.0 and v0.51.0 within a week. The README says the code is written by AI coding agents through an in-house workflow and that external pull requests are not accepted, only issues. It has 87 stars and 67 open issues. That pace brings features quickly; it also means a fast-moving codebase whose direction rests with one developer.
Data mostly stays home. Telemetry is off by default and there is no relay or account, but the Assistant's runbook lookup sends Daintree a short task summary, and the optional Canopy inbox downloads a small local model from Hugging Face and checks for updates at launch. Against Claude Squad, a terminal tool for the same job, Daintree offers far more review and triage; against Vibe Kanban, a local web app organised around a kanban board, it stays closer to plain terminals and git.
Where it earns its place
A solo developer maintaining a SaaS product
Work through five small GitHub issues at once without the agents breaking each other's changes
Select the issues and create one worktree and agent per issue, then use the inbox to answer whichever is waiting and Review Hub to read each diff before merging. Daintree is free; the cost is your Claude Code or Codex plan.
A tech lead at a 10-person engineering team
Compare how Claude Code and Codex handle the same refactor
Fleet broadcast sends one prompt to both agents in separate worktrees, with per-agent edits before sending, and Review Hub shows each worktree's diff against main.
A contractor working from a laptop
Leave long agent runs going overnight without keeping the laptop awake
Run the project on a Linux or Mac host over your own SSH; agents keep running while the laptop sleeps. The optional Decisions relay, deployed to your own Cloudflare account and end-to-end encrypted, lets you answer agent questions from a phone.
Before you commit
- Setup
- Download a signed and notarised build for macOS 13+, a per-user installer for Windows 10+, or an AppImage or deb for Linux, or brew install --cask daintreehq/tap/daintree. Git and at least one agent CLI must be on your PATH; Settings offers one-click agent installers.
- Integrations
- 17 built-in agent CLIs plus plugins for more; GitHub issues, pull requests and CI checks; a local MCP server with 36 tools in four tiers; SSH remote hosts; Docker, VM or remote sandbox provisioning per worktree; context injection via CopyTree.
- Data and privacy
- No account, relay or control plane; telemetry off by default. The Assistant's runbook lookup sends a short task summary to Daintree, and Canopy checks Hugging Face for model updates at launch. Agents run shell commands as your user with full access to your files; worktrees are not a sandbox.
- Cost at scale
- No licence cost. Parallel runs multiply agent usage: five concurrent Claude Code or Codex sessions consume a plan's limits about five times as fast.
- Limits
- State detection is heuristic; OpenCode 2 not yet supported; plugins run unconfined code; external pull requests not accepted; 67 open issues.
What’s good
- One worktree and terminal per task; agents cannot clash
- Runs 17 real agent CLIs with your existing logins
- Review Hub with diffs, commits, pull requests and CI checks
- Telemetry off by default; no account or relay
What’s not
- Worktrees are not a sandbox; agents run as your user
- No external pull requests; code written by AI agents
- 87 stars and one named developer behind it
- Agent state detection is heuristic and can mislabel runs
Best for
Developers who already pay for one or more coding-agent CLIs and want to run several tasks in parallel with a proper review step before anything merges.
Daintree alternatives
Daintree: common questions
- Is Daintree worth it?
- Daintree is the most thought-through cockpit for running several coding agents at once, with refreshingly honest docs, but it is a small project with 87 stars, led by one developer, whose code is written by AI agents and which accepts no outside pull requests. We rate it 3.9 out of 5.
- How much does Daintree cost?
- Free and open source (Apache 2.0), no account. You pay for the agent CLIs' own subscriptions or API usage; Daintree does not relay or bill model traffic.
- What are the downsides of Daintree?
- Worktrees are not a sandbox; agents run as your user; no external pull requests; code written by AI agents; 87 stars and one named developer behind it; agent state detection is heuristic and can mislabel runs.
- Who is Daintree best for?
- Developers who already pay for one or more coding-agent CLIs and want to run several tasks in parallel with a proper review step before anything merges.
- How much does Daintree cost for a team or in production?
- No licence cost. Parallel runs multiply agent usage: five concurrent Claude Code or Codex sessions consume a plan's limits about five times as fast.
- Is Daintree safe for company data?
- No account, relay or control plane; telemetry off by default. The Assistant's runbook lookup sends a short task summary to Daintree, and Canopy checks Hugging Face for model updates at launch. Agents run shell commands as your user with full access to your files; worktrees are not a sandbox.
- What are the best Daintree alternatives?
- The closest alternatives we have reviewed are Claude Squad, Vibe Kanban, OpenCode and OpenAI Codex CLI.
Answers checked Nov 14, 2026.