00:00:00With the rise of coding CLIs, there are a ton of different tools out there that help manage your AI agents to write your code for you.
00:00:06In today's video, I'm going to show you some of the main ones and how they compare.
00:00:10What I use day-to-day myself right now is Conductor, but this is quite flexible and I'm often jumping around between tools.
00:00:16Some other tools that are starting to become popular include SuperSet, C-Mux, the Codex app is actually quite nice,
00:00:23and then a lot of people are just writing in regular terminals like Ghosty, Warp, or Iterm.
00:00:27And of course, people are still using tools like Cursor or VS Code.
00:00:31I'll focus on Conductor, SuperSet, and C-Mux in this video because these are quite new tools that not that many people have tried.
00:00:36Everyone knows how to use VS Code or Cursor, so I won't go into them too deeply.
00:00:40So first up is Conductor. This is actually what you see on my screen right now.
00:00:44So you can see I have a whole bunch of different chats running in parallel.
00:00:48This is real work that I'm doing right now for Inbox Zero.
00:00:50Each of these chats down the side is a different work tree.
00:00:53If you're not familiar with work trees, they became very popular due to AI agents running in parallel.
00:00:58And what it does is it takes your core project and basically clones it into a new folder in your computer.
00:01:03So here you can see I've got the Inbox Zero repo and I've just got lots of copies of it on the computer.
00:01:08This one's called Belgrade, Algiers.
00:01:10Each one has a different name, and that is basically what you're seeing over here in my sidebar.
00:01:15Each one is basically its own branch that I can work on.
00:01:18It's got its own PR as well.
00:01:20So the changes over here aren't impacting any of the changes over here.
00:01:25It's as if you have seven different employee workers working for you, different AI agents,
00:01:30and each one is changing different files and can work in parallel without stepping on each other's feet.
00:01:35Now to show you around how Conductor works, it's just a regular chat.
00:01:38So here you can see I've got one task in progress, so I'm telling it the AI to continue its work.
00:01:43And you can see once the task is actually ready and complete for me, I can go and check the PR that it's attached to.
00:01:49I can also click here to merge it.
00:01:51I can click a review button over here, which is going to just spawn up a new agent in a new tab to go and review the changes in this work tree or branch.
00:01:59I can also see the different files.
00:02:01So here is the .env example file.
00:02:03And over here on the right, I have a regular terminal.
00:02:07Now, because of how work trees work, they're copying and pasting your main project into a new location.
00:02:13And that often means you need to do a new setup for that folder.
00:02:17So something you'll see in all these projects that we're covering today is there's a setup script and a run script.
00:02:24A setup script basically means when I hit plus to start working on a new feature in a new work tree, it will go and do something like a PMPM install or even run the project on a new port.
00:02:35It's up to you how you use those.
00:02:36But typically what you'll see is the setup script is maybe doing a PMPM install and then the run script is actually running the app and then you'll be able to visit it on localhost 3000 or some other port.
00:02:46You could have every single work tree running on a different port for you.
00:02:50And this is necessary because each work tree has different changes.
00:02:54So if you run the project in one folder, it's obviously not going to show you the changes in another folder on your computer.
00:03:00Now, another thing which is really nice is you can see the checks.
00:03:04So your build or your GitHub comments.
00:03:07So here you can see I've got lots of checks running and you can see I've got some comments from Kubik and Baz, which are AI code review tools.
00:03:15And if I click on one, you can see here's a comment that it's given me as part of its review.
00:03:19If I want, I can even add all these comments to the chat over here and have the AI fix it up automatically by hitting send.
00:03:25The next step I want to show you is super set.
00:03:28Here you can see it's a very similar idea.
00:03:30You have all your different agents running down the side.
00:03:32Frankly, I think a ton of different projects have been inspired by Conductor, which is why you see them all converging on a similar interface.
00:03:39You can see the ability to commit on the right.
00:03:41You have different files of the project.
00:03:44And what's interesting here is there's more of a first class experience for the terminal.
00:03:49So if you like to just run regular Claude code or codex, you can do that.
00:03:54Here you can see a regular run that's happened.
00:03:56They do have their own chat interface as well.
00:03:58So if you prefer that, I think this is quite new.
00:04:00Conductor pushes you to using their custom chat interface with super set.
00:04:04You have that flexibility.
00:04:06Now, the reason you might want to use the real version of code code or codex is that it will have all the latest features.
00:04:13What I mean by that is there could be an update to codex and there's a new slash command.
00:04:18You do a slash here in Conductor and it just doesn't appear because they haven't updated Conductor.
00:04:22It is largely a wrapper around code code and codex, but it's not one to one because you're using their chat interface.
00:04:29But over here, it's a similar idea using the chat interface from super set, but you can also use the CLI as well directly.
00:04:36Something else that you'll find in super set is that you can also work off of the main branch.
00:04:40Now, surprisingly, that's a little bit annoying to do in Conductor.
00:04:43You can't work off of main in Conductor as far as I'm aware.
00:04:47You have to open up the project in something like cursor or vs code.
00:04:52And by the way, while I'm here, Conductor has this exact same thing.
00:04:54But here you can see I can open up the project from super set directly in some other editor like zed or whatever I choose to open.
00:05:01Exact same idea over here.
00:05:03I can open it in finder or ghosty or whatever I want.
00:05:06Another cool part of super set is that you can open up browser tab so he can see inbox zero and this is running directly within super set.
00:05:15This can be helpful if you're doing front end code.
00:05:18I should mention as well that both these apps, they sync with linear and GitHub.
00:05:22So you can create a new work tree based off of a linear issue, for example.
00:05:27And here are some other features that super set has.
00:05:29I think these will be really interesting when cloud workspaces and the mobile app launch.
00:05:34I assume Conductor is going to do something similar as well.
00:05:36These apps change very quickly, as you can imagine.
00:05:39And what we're seeing here today will be quite a different story in three months time.
00:05:42If I show you how we actually use super set, you can see I can choose between codex or cloud code or frankly, lots of other options like open code.
00:05:50I guess this is another advantage of super set over Conductor.
00:05:54With Conductor, you're limited to only codex and cloud code.
00:05:57Here I have lots of other options that I can use.
00:05:59So let's go and make that change, create a workspace.
00:06:03You can see the workspace is setting up, doing a few things.
00:06:06It's opened up codex over here and you can see at the same time it's doing a PMPM install over here in another pane.
00:06:15Now that it's done, I'm going to ask it to create a PR.
00:06:19By the way, if you note down the side, our branch has been renamed.
00:06:22We can open a preview of it in the browser, which is nice.
00:06:26And you can see the PR is ready.
00:06:27It's linked it for me over here.
00:06:29But I can also see down the side that we're at PR 1915 and you can see the checks are running very, very similar experience to Conductor.
00:06:37I can also click here and see the changes or the commits.
00:06:40If I want to see the diff, I can click in here and hopefully I can see the diff down here and you can see the CI checks are also running.
00:06:48This is happening in things like GitHub actions and other bots I have connected.
00:06:52You can see the Vercel bot and socket security are already finished and the AI code reviewers are still running as well as some end to end tests.
00:07:00Something to be aware of when using Superset and Conductor.
00:07:03You can do search files, but I don't believe there's a way to search for specific words.
00:07:07So often you are opening up the code in another editor.
00:07:10Let's say I wanted to find this in the project.
00:07:12I don't think there's a way for me to do this in Conductor or Superset today.
00:07:17It's not that important, but there are a whole bunch of times I will be opening up another editor to more deeply see what's going on.
00:07:24But for the most part, day to day, I'm just in Conductor managing my different agents down the sidebar.
00:07:29And by the way, here you can see this one.
00:07:31This change is now being created.
00:07:33I can click create PR could also click review and it just continues with the process.
00:07:37So it has a lot of nice built in buttons that make the workflow just much easier to use.
00:07:42Cmux is the next tool we're going to look at.
00:07:44But before that, let's take a quick look at what Ghosty looks like.
00:07:46Ghosty is just another terminal.
00:07:48It's cool. You should download it.
00:07:49It's very performant. It's built in Zig.
00:07:51Here you can see Codex running in Ghosty.
00:07:53The exact same thing. This is Claude code running in iTerm2.
00:07:56And here you see we have warp running.
00:08:00Also a cool terminal. This one does stand out a bit because you can use AI with your terminal.
00:08:04And it does a whole bunch of other things like agentic coding.
00:08:07I haven't used it a ton for that, so I'm not going to go into it.
00:08:10But it is like a very nice terminal to use via natural language instead of having to type commands.
00:08:16And here you can see what warp looks like in practice.
00:08:18But jumping over to Cmux, we can see that Cmux is a native Mac OS app built on Ghosty.
00:08:24Vertical tabs, notification rings when agents need attention, split panes and socket API for automation.
00:08:30This is what it looks like. You can see lots of tasks running down the side.
00:08:33You can also see lots of panes over here running.
00:08:37And you can even see a browser tab running.
00:08:39And this is what Cmux looks like in practice when you first open it up.
00:08:43It's just a Ghosty terminal which is very performant, which is great, but then you can start to do other things.
00:08:48So this starts to work more like Tmux. If you're not familiar with Tmux, this is the idea behind Tmux.
00:08:53Here you can see Tmux running in my terminal.
00:08:55I can do things like different panes within Tmux itself. It's a terminal within a terminal.
00:09:00Also known as a terminal multiplexer.
00:09:03And here you can see I've actually gone and run Tmux within Cmux, but we're going to go and leave that.
00:09:08And here we have Cmux running. And you can see I can keep splitting it into different windows.
00:09:13And so this is really nice. If I want to run four different codecs in parallel, I can do that.
00:09:18And I don't need to have four different windows that I'm managing.
00:09:21Of course, I can do another terminal over here and I can jump back and forth between the terminals.
00:09:27And one of the really cool things about Cmux is that it's a CLI that you can call.
00:09:32So, for example, here Cmux new split left and I can get it to create another tab for me.
00:09:37And you can imagine if you're using Clawed Code, it could, for example, spin up multiple different agents in lots of different tabs for you.
00:09:44And you can also get Clawed Code to use the Cmux CLI to control other things.
00:09:49So, for example, here you can see we're on PR 1905.
00:09:52And so I was able to have that set up by just telling Clawed Code, "Hey, I want to see the PR in the sidebar over here."
00:09:59You can also get it to handle things like notifications for you automatically and customize those.
00:10:04So, for example, when Clawed Code or codecs is finished with a task, they can call the Cmux CLI to send you a notification to tell you which tab it's in and that it's done.
00:10:14And you can also use it for things like running the browser and browser automation.
00:10:18So, for example, here I've done Cmux browser open get inbox zero dot com.
00:10:21And you can see it's popped up in a new tab over here.
00:10:24Take a look at the docs for more about what it can do.
00:10:27Here you can see the browser automation CLI.
00:10:30Here you can see how it manages notifications for you.
00:10:33Cmux notify. Let's try this one out.
00:10:36And you can see we've got a new notification. That's great.
00:10:39Now, there are some differences between Cmux and Cmux.
00:10:42Tmux is really great for, let's say, remote session work.
00:10:46If your session gets disconnected from your server, so Tmux will keep running.
00:10:50Cmux is Mac only, so it's not going to work on your server, probably.
00:10:54But this also means if you're running it on your computer and then you want to continue work on your phone, it won't help you there.
00:11:00Now, I personally use a tool called Echo on my phone. It's really cheap, costs three dollars.
00:11:05But basically what it allows you to do is SSH into your computer.
00:11:08And if you already have a Tmux Claude code session running, you can just continue it directly for your phone.
00:11:14You can have your computer and your phone on the same tail scale network to get that set up.
00:11:18And here you can see what that experience looks like. And it's actually quite nice.
00:11:21I don't use it a ton, but the app itself is super simple, super polished.
00:11:25So I recommend taking a look at that as well.
00:11:27That's the end of the video. I hope this gives you some good ideas on
00:11:31the different tools that exist out there and how you can use them.
00:11:34Frankly, they all do almost the same thing.
00:11:37Ultimately, you're just chatting with your AI via a slightly different interface.
00:11:41To me, the most important thing is can I run multiple agents in parallel?
00:11:45The way I found that easiest to do is using work trees.
00:11:48So I should actually mention Cmux doesn't have anything native around work trees.
00:11:52So you do need to look around for scripts to set that up.
00:11:55But if you're using something like Claude, you could just hit Claude work tree
00:11:58and it will set things up in a new work tree for you.
00:12:01Work trees are built into Git, so literally every app you're using can use them.
00:12:05But something like Conductor or Superset where you just hit plus
00:12:09and you get a new work tree and everything set up for you automatically,
00:12:11you don't have to worry about that. So that's very nice.
00:12:14If you're using something like Cmux, there are scripts online that can help you do the same thing.
00:12:17And frankly, there's a few lines of code to help you do the same thing.
00:12:20I hope you enjoyed the video and found it interesting.
00:12:23Be sure to subscribe for future videos. And if you want to do me a favor,
00:12:26check out GitInboxZero.com. Start the repo on GitHub. It's fully open source.
00:12:31It's an AI email assistant that helps you manage your email and helps you get to inbox zero fast.