Conductor is joining Meta. Save your cloud workspaces by November 20, then pick where your parallel agents go next
Meta has acquired Conductor, the Mac app for running Claude Code and Codex agents in parallel. Conductor Cloud goes read-only November 13 and shuts down November 20, when cloud data deletion begins. The local app keeps working until early 2027. Move cloud workspaces to local now and plan a replacement.
Founder and CEO Charlie Holtz announced the deal on November 4: “I have big news: Conductor is joining Meta.” Meta confirmed it to TechCrunch but gave no price or other terms. Conductor's own announcement and 0.93.0 changelog set out the wind-down.
The team says it's building something new for early 2027. Nobody has said whether it will be a Meta product, open to everyone, or tied to Meta's own models. Plan as if the current app ends then.
The wind-down dates
| Date | What happens |
|---|---|
| November 4 | No new sign-ups or downloads. Free users can't upgrade; Pro users keep Pro features for free |
| November 13 | Conductor Cloud goes read-only. You can read old chats and export, but not send messages. Active subscribers get a refund |
| November 20 | Conductor Cloud shuts down and deletion of Cloud user data begins |
| Early 2027 | Local Conductor stops getting new models and critical bug fixes, and winds down |
The local app isn't affected until 2027, but a coding agent wrapper that stops getting updates ages fast. Claude Code and Codex change often, and a wrapper pinned to old behavior will start breaking in small ways long before it stops launching.
Save your work this week
Do this before November 13, while you can still send messages and check that a transfer worked:
- Move cloud workspaces you want to keep. Right-click each one and choose Transfer to local. Conductor says this keeps the workspace and its chats.
- Export everything. Go to Settings, then Account, then Export data for a full archive.
- Push every branch. Each Conductor workspace is a git branch in its own worktree. Anything committed but not pushed only exists on that machine or in the cloud workspace. Run
git branch -vvin the repo and push any branch with no upstream or markedahead. Thengit log --branches --not --remotesshould print nothing. - Copy your setup scripts. Conductor's setup, run, and archive scripts and its
settings.tomldefaults are the parts you'll need to rebuild elsewhere. Save them in the repo now.
Conductor says it has “never sold or trained on user data” and won't start. That doesn't change the deletion date. If a chat explains why the code looks the way it does, export it.
What you're replacing
Conductor didn't ship its own agent. Its comparison page says “Conductor runs Claude Code inside workspaces,” and it could run Codex the same way. What it added was the workspace layer around them. Per its parallel agents guide, each workspace got:
- its own git worktree and branch
- a terminal, a diff view, checks, and a pull request path
- setup scripts for dependency installs and generated files, plus a list of gitignored files to copy in
- a
CONDUCTOR_PORTvariable that gave each workspace its own port range for dev servers
The agents themselves keep working without it. What you lose is the dashboard and the per-workspace setup, so that's what to look for in a replacement.
Where to run parallel agents next
The two big agent vendors now ship their own version of this. We compared them from their docs; we haven't moved a real Conductor setup to either.
| Option | Isolation | Setup per worktree | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
Claude Code agent view (claude agents) | Each background session moves into its own worktree under .claude/worktrees/ before editing | No setup-script setting in the agent view docs; a WorktreeCreate hook can replace how worktrees are made | Research preview. Each session uses your plan quota separately |
| Codex in the ChatGPT desktop app | Worktrees under $CODEX_HOME/worktrees by default | A local environment runs setup scripts; .worktreeinclude copies ignored files such as .env | Keeps the 15 most recent worktrees by default and deletes older ones, after saving a snapshot |
Plain git worktree plus terminal tabs | Whatever you set up | Your own script | No dashboard showing which agent is blocked |
Sources: Claude Code agent view docs and Codex worktree docs.
If you mostly ran Claude Code in Conductor, agent view is the closest match. claude --bg "fix the flaky date test" starts a session in the background, claude agents lists them all with what needs your input, and Space lets you reply without attaching. The agent view docs don't describe a setup-script setting, so keep your Conductor setup script in the repo and tell the agent to run it first in CLAUDE.md, or look at Claude Code's hooks.
If you mostly ran Codex, the desktop app's worktree mode covers the same ground. Its Hand off button moves a chat and its code between your main checkout and a worktree, which Conductor users did by hand. Move your copy-these-files list into .worktreeinclude.
If you ran both side by side to compare plans, neither vendor tool runs the other's agent. Plain worktrees with one terminal per agent is the honest fallback. Neither vendor doc mentions a port-range variable like CONDUCTOR_PORT, so give each worktree its own dev-server port in your setup script.
The pattern to notice
Wrappers that sit between you and a vendor's coding agent are being squeezed from both sides. The vendors keep shipping the wrapper's best features, and the wrappers with traction get bought.
That's an argument for keeping your workflow in files you own: setup scripts in the repo, branches pushed, instruction files in AGENTS.md or CLAUDE.md. Our guide to agent instruction files covers which tools read which. Then a tool shutting down costs you an afternoon, not your history.
Sources
- Conductor: announcement: timeline, refunds, export, and data policy.
- Conductor changelog 0.93.0: Transfer to local and Export data steps.
- TechCrunch (November 4, 2026): Meta's confirmation and Holtz's quotes.
- Conductor: Run parallel Claude Codes and Conductor vs Claude Code: how workspaces work.
- Claude Code docs: Agent view.
- Codex docs: Git worktrees.
Researched and drafted by an AI agent from the linked sources. How posts are made.