Coral vs. Conductor, T3 Code and Herdr: what’s different

How four tools for running AI coding agents compare on what matters once you run more than one.

If you run AI coding agents, such as Claude Code or Codex, you have choices for how to organise them. This post compares four tools that solve related but different problems: Coral, T3 Code, Herdr and Conductor.

Conductor update. Conductor is joining Meta. Cloud goes read-only November 13 and data deletion begins November 20. The local app keeps getting new models and critical bug fixes until early 2027, then winds down. If you use it, see the migration guide. Checked Nov 7, 2026: Conductor’s announcement. Reported by Axios, Nov 4, 2026.

The tools at a glance

Checked Nov 8, 2026: Coral, LICENSE and quickstart; T3 Code, its README and FAQ; Herdr, its README and LICENSE and agents and Windows docs; Conductor, its install docs and docs.

Operator inbox: who is waiting on you?

With several agents working in parallel, they will need you: a decision, a review, an answer.

• Coral has a dedicated “Needs you” inbox. Agents post questions, submit work for review, and a health monitor escalates idle agents and stale waits.
• T3 Code has no separate inbox. Each thread shows a status in the sidebar, such as Pending Approval or Awaiting Input, you answer inside the thread, and the phone apps send an alert when an agent needs approval or asks for input.
• Herdr has no inbox. The sidebar marks every agent working, blocked, done or idle across all workspaces, and it can send a notification when an agent finishes or needs input.
• Conductor has no cross-workspace list. It groups workspaces by status (backlog, in progress, in review, done), can mark a workspace unread, and sends notifications.

Coral: board.md. Checked Nov 8, 2026: T3 Code notifications, Herdr quick start, Conductor workspace status.

Review workflows: who checks the agents’ work?

• Coral has multi-round reviews: an agent submits work, the orchestrator delegates to reviewers, who approve or reject with comments. Verification badges show whether work was verified, backed by evidence or unverified, and a review pool lets you name dedicated reviewer agents.
• T3 Code shows each turn’s diff and lets you leave line comments. For pull requests it supports review verdicts: comment, approve or request changes. It has no reviewer agents of its own.
• Herdr has no review feature. You read the agent’s terminal, and you can ask another agent to review a diff by prompting it.
• Conductor has a diff viewer where you leave comments on changed lines and send them back to the agent, a Checks tab, and pull-request creation and merge. Its guide treats approval as a condition for merging; its docs describe no multi-round or multi-reviewer flow.

Coral: completion-review.md, board.md. Checked Nov 8, 2026: T3 Code source control, Herdr, Conductor review and merge.

Artifacts: what did the agents produce?

• Coral has an immutable, content-addressed artifact store. Each artifact gets a SHA-256 hash and a coral:// address. People and agents can comment on text artifacts, search, filter by tag, share across teams and keep versions.
• T3 Code has no artifact store. Files stay where the agent wrote them, and an agent can publish an HTML page, such as a chart or a mockup, that sits in the thread and is deleted with it.
• Herdr has none; agent output is terminal text.
• Conductor has no artifact store either. Work lives in git branches, and each workspace has a folder for notes and handoffs.

Coral: artifacts.md. Checked Nov 8, 2026: T3 Code HTML pages, Herdr, Conductor workspaces.

Agent teams: how do agents coordinate?

• Coral has named roles, a shared message board, a task queue with priorities and dependencies, goals, knowledge distillation, health monitoring and cross-team messaging. Teams persist: you can put a team to sleep and wake it later. Up to 32 agents per team.
• T3 Code lets agents message each other: an agent can start child agents, send to other threads, wait on them and cancel them, through its built-in MCP server. It has no named roles and no shared board. Threads can be pinned, snoozed, settled and archived, one at a time.
• Herdr lets agents spawn and prompt each other through a local socket API and wait until another agent is blocked. Agents can have a name, not a role, and there are no tasks. Workspaces and sessions survive detaching; after a restart the layout comes back and supported agent sessions can resume.
• Conductor runs parallel agents in separate workspaces. It has no roles, no task assignment and no messaging between agents. Todos block a merge, workspaces can start from a GitHub or Linear issue, and archiving saves a workspace’s git state so it can be restored.

Coral: teams.md. Checked Nov 8, 2026: T3 Code, Herdr sessions, Conductor todos, archiving.

Setup and getting started

• Coral: install the app, open it, create a team. The team builder helps, but there are more steps than in the other tools (our assessment). quickstart.md
• T3 Code: install the desktop app or the t3 command, sign in to at least one agent tool’s CLI, and start. The fastest path from install to running agents (our assessment). README, checked Nov 8, 2026.
• Herdr: install it with Homebrew, mise or a release binary, then run herdr in a project and start an agent in a pane. Install docs, checked Nov 8, 2026.
• Conductor: download the Mac app, sign in to GitHub and one agent provider, add a repository and create a workspace. The simplest of the four (our assessment), and now winding down. Install docs, checked Nov 8, 2026.

Mobile and remote access

• T3 Code has iOS and Android apps and a web app. They connect to your computer through T3 Connect, your local network, Tailscale or SSH, and your computer does the work, so it has to stay on.
• Coral has Coral Hub, which shows your agents on a phone or any browser (closed beta), and you can run your own hub, self-hosted. quickstart.md
• Herdr reaches other machines over SSH, from a phone SSH client or a saved machine in its own window. It has no mobile app and no web dashboard.
• Conductor has an iOS app, released October 2, 2026, and an experimental remote control that lets you work in the local workspaces on your Mac from your iPhone (October 23). Cloud workspaces go read-only November 13. It has no Android app and runs only on macOS.

Checked Nov 8, 2026: T3 Code FAQ, Herdr, Conductor for iOS, remote control, Conductor changelog (Cloud read-only November 13).

Side by side

Which tool fits?

• Launch a few agents fast and watch them. T3 Code or Herdr. Both are open source and quick to set up; T3 Code has phone apps, and Herdr lives in the terminal and reaches other machines over SSH.
• Structured team coordination with task queues, reviews, an inbox, artifacts and teams that survive restarts: that is what Coral is built for.
• Using Conductor? Read the migration guide. Coral supports parallel agents with worktrees and adds structured coordination on top. Export your data before November 20; sooner is safer.

Coral, T3 Code and Herdr are open source; Conductor is proprietary and is winding down. You can try the open-source tools side by side.

Items marked “our assessment” are our judgement, not sourced facts. Herdr has a plugin system and marketplace that we did not audit, so a plugin may add something its docs do not describe. We have no commercial relationship with any of the tools compared. Conductor, T3 Code, Herdr and other product names are trademarks of their owners; no endorsement is implied.

Sources

• Conductor is joining Meta, conductor.build. Checked Nov 7, 2026.
• Meta acquires Conductor, Axios, Nov 4, 2026.
• Conductor documentation and changelog: docs, review and merge, todos, install, iOS app, remote control. Checked Nov 8, 2026.
• T3 Code: README and the user docs (FAQ, source control, notifications, HTML pages, thread sidebar, outside agents). Checked Nov 8, 2026.
• Herdr: README and LICENSE and the docs (quick start, how to work, connecting machines, session state, agents, Windows). Checked Nov 8, 2026.
• Coral: agent_docs and LICENSE.