alt Hacker NewsI'm buying into this workflow more the more I use it, but the real gamechanger is (a) parallel threads in worktrees, with (b) enough lifecycle hooks to treat them similarly to spinning up a VM.
Specifically for me that means that after I create a worktree I get some local config files copied over and Postgres duplicating my local dev and test databases so I can test in isolation, and then when I close out a worktree it deletes those databases.
The best at that that I've found is Conductor, but I can't use it at work because we only have Copilot and they're locked to a Claude/Codex backend. Arbor is close, but it's not under as active development and has a lot of rough edges. Opencode GUI has create hooks but not teardown.
If Zed can hook that up _and_ also keep its great editor roots, that'll definitely be a game changer.
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Love to hear it! (Conductor founder here).
This is helpful to know - we're working on adding more agents, Copilot and OpenCode harnesses are among the most popular requests.
We also recently built an escape hatch. If you turn on Settings → Experimental → Big Terminal Mode you can create new terminals in the center panel (with ⌘⇧T) and use any agent you'd like (Copilot, OpenCode, etc). It isn't the best experience because you don't get notifications etc (yet), but at least it lets you use the harness you'd like until we build out the first-class UI for it.
Send me feedback anytime, I'm [email protected].
You should check out Ouijit [1] - I use it regularly for work and it's nice because it focuses on the environment that you want, and just gives you a shell that you can use any tooling in, as well as VM isolation per worktree if needed.
No need for any AI-specific tool, this is exactly what devcontainer is for! Just tell your agent to use devcontainer up (and docker compose down the other way).
> The best at that that I've found is Conductor, but I can't use it at work because we only have Copilot and they're locked to a Claude/Codex backend.
FYI, you can use Copilot directly in Zed!
self-promotion, but check out worktrunk.dev
by far the most popular worktree manager
tried parallel agents for a sprint and bounced off it. the worktree dance is fine, real blocker for us was test data isolation. scoped postgres schemas per branch worked, but reasoning about which agent broke teh shared migration when three of them touch it got old fast. we just run one agent at a time now and go for a walk.
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In VSCode, I use https://github.com/jackiotyu/git-worktree-manager for the same purpose - the extension has before create/before destroy WT hooks which you can run anything from. Mine symlinks workspace file from main checkout, installs packages and copies over some files. Very handy.