Why I built Parallel Code

I've been maintaining an open source productivity app (Super Productivity) for 9 years and working as a programmer for much longer than that. When AI coding agents came along, they changed how I work - but the other tools and habits I grow comfortable with over the years, weren't a good fit anymore.

One agent works on a feature. I wait, get distracted, start something else. Finally, I come back, review, start the next one. Wait again. Get distracted again. I had a backlog of ideas and the tools to build them, but things got messy. I was doing a lot, but I felt like I'd lost control compared to how I used to code.

I tried the obvious fixes. Multiple terminal windows were my new go-to solution, but got chaotic fast - which terminal was working on what? Tmux helped organize it, but I was still cycling through panes, switching tools for reviewing diffs and history, losing track of context, and dealing with merge conflicts when agents touched the same files.

So I built Parallel Code to fix this for myself.

The core idea: every task gets its own git branch and worktree automatically. Agents work in complete isolation - they can't conflict. I kick off 5, 8, 10, 15 at a time, watch them all in a tiled view, and review diffs as they finish.

One design decision I'm particularly proud of: it runs your real terminal CLIs. Claude Code, Codex CLI, Gemini CLI - whatever you use today works exactly the same inside Parallel Code. Same behavior, same config, nothing changes. I didn't want to build another wrapper or chat UI. If you don't like the app, go back to raw terminals. Zero switching cost.

Some things I added along the way also turned out very useful:

- Phone monitoring - Scan a QR code, watch all your agent terminals from your phone. Sure there are other ways to do this, but this is really comfortable.

- Keyboard-first design - 40+ shortcuts. When you're managing 10 agents, reaching for the mouse is too slow. Best part is to navigate panes with just Alt+Arrow-keys.

- Built-in diff review and merge - The merge step is where quality happens. So having a quick way to do a code review is very useuful.

Parallel Code is free, open source (MIT), and always will be. No subscriptions, no platform fees, no telemetry. Your API keys stay on your machine.

I built this because I needed it. I'm sharing it because I think other developers - especially solo devs and indie hackers - hit the same problems I did. If you're running AI coding agents one at a time and don't have your tools setup in an optimal way, you're leaving a lot on the table.

macOS and Linux. Windows is on the roadmap.

Happy to answer any questions!