Sign in

Head to head · Agent harnesses · October 2026 research run

Conductor vs Emdash

Emdash scores 53.9 (D) on agent readiness against Conductor's 41.3 (E), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Conductor leads on schema & documentation and security & auth. Both do agent harnesses.

Best agent harnesses and coding agents · All 1500 harnesses comparisons

ConductorConductor (joining Meta) · Agent harness E41.3/100#1285 of 1486 EmdashGeneral Action, Inc. · Agent harness D53.9/100#927 of 1486

Which one, for what

Conductor E

Best for Existing Conductor users planning their move before Cloud closes on 20 November 2026 and the local app winds down in early 2027.

Ahead on

  • Schema & documentation, 60 against 55
  • Security & auth, 45 against 38

Watch for

No new downloads or sign-ups since 4 November 2026

Emdash D

Best for Developers who want parallel agents in worktrees, fed from their issue tracker, locally or over SSH.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 55 against 25
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 0
  • Maintenance & community, 70 against 58

Also in its favour

  • No key needed to call it
  • Open source

Watch for

Telemetry on unless turned off in Settings or with TELEMETRY_ENABLED=false

Why the edge

Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.

Payments & pricing Emdash +60

Conductor 0

No new sign-ups since 4 November, free users can't upgrade, and no price is shown. No protocol, no published price, no open free tier, no onboarding (0).

Emdash 60

Free self-hosted software with nothing to buy, so 0 for a protocol and 20 each for public pricing, a free tier and onboarding with no sign-up, 60.

Reliability Emdash +30

Conductor 25

Read as local software that is winding down. Installed from Conductor's own download, which stopped taking new users on 4 November 2026 (10). Closed source, so no public CI or issue tracker (0, 0). A dated changelog, newest 0.93.0 on 4 November (15). Version 0.93 (0). 10 + 0 + 0 + 15 + 0 = 25.

Emdash 55

Local software. Homebrew cask and installers for macOS, Windows and Linux (20). A code-consistency check and release workflows; no test workflow found (10). GitHub issues and pull requests weren't read (GitHub's pages refuse these sessions), so that line is scored absent (0). Stable tags to v1.2.11, release notes on GitHub (10). Version 1.2.11 (15). 20 + 10 + 0 + 10 + 15 = 55.

Maintenance & community Emdash +12

Conductor 58

0.93.0 on 4 November 2026 (30). Several dated releases in 90 days, per the changelog index (20). Discord, a subreddit and email for support (8). Closed app, no package or CI to read (0). 30 + 20 + 8 + 0 + 0 = 58. The local app gets new models and critical fixes only until early 2027.

Emdash 70

v1.2.11 on 6 November 2026 (30). v1.2.9, v1.2.10 and v1.2.11 within two weeks (20). GitHub issues and pull requests weren't read (GitHub's pages refuse these sessions), so that line is scored absent (0). Current installers and Homebrew cask (15). Release workflows, no test CI (5). 30 + 20 + 0 + 15 + 5 = 70.

Security & auth Conductor +7

Conductor 45

Closed app. Telemetry and data handling weren't read beyond the transition notice (10 of 30). A security and permissions page (10 of 20). No prompt-injection guidance found (5). No audit log found (5). SOC 2 Type II report at trust.conductor.build (15 of 20). 10 + 10 + 5 + 5 + 15 = 45.

Emdash 38

Harness reading. Telemetry is described as optional and disabled in Settings or with TELEMETRY_ENABLED=false, which reads as on by default (15 of 30). Worktree per task and remote machines over SSH (10 of 20). No prompt-injection guidance (5). No audit log (5). No security policy file found (3). 15 + 10 + 5 + 5 + 3 = 38.

Schema & documentation Conductor +5

Conductor 60

Harness reading. Docs for workspaces, review and merge, a Conductor API reference page linked from the docs (not read), and security and permissions pages (60).

Emdash 55

Harness reading. Docs site and a workspace server package (55).

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runConductorEmdashEdge
Reliability16%202555Emdash +30
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.26055Conductor +5
Agent ergonomics13%16.25555even
Security & auth14%17.54538Conductor +7
Payments & pricing10%12.5060Emdash +60
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.85870Emdash +12
Transparency & trust7%8.85354Emdash +1
Negative events≤1500
TotalE 41.3/100D 53.9/100

Facts side by side

FactConductorEmdash
KindAgent harnessAgent harness
VendorConductor (joining Meta)General Action, Inc.
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthOAuth or keyNone
PricingPaidFree
x402nono
LicenceProprietary. A closed-source Mac app and hosted Conductor Cloud under Conductor's termsApache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-11-042026-11-06
Terms last updatednot read yetno document linked
Privacy policy last updatednot read yetno document linked

Verdicts

Conductor

Conductor ran parallel coding agents on the Mac, and Meta is acquiring it. It has taken no new users since 4 November 2026, Cloud turns read-only on 13 November and shuts down on 20 November, and the local app winds down in early 2027, when all user data is deleted.

Emdash

A mature open-source app for parallel coding agents in Git worktrees, with issue intake from a dozen trackers and remote machines over SSH. Telemetry is on unless you turn it off, and no test workflow was found in the repository.

Before you call either

Conductor

  1. Export your data from Settings, Account, Export data before 20 November 2026
  2. Move Cloud workspaces to your Mac with Transfer to local before 13 November
  3. Plan a move off the local app before early 2027; see the agent-harnesses category for alternatives

Emdash

  1. Launch with TELEMETRY_ENABLED=false if you don't want telemetry
  2. Use the SSH mode to keep agents on a remote machine

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Conductor or Emdash?

Emdash scores 53.9 (D) on agent readiness against Conductor's 41.3 (E), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Conductor leads on schema & documentation and security & auth.

Are Conductor and Emdash open source?

No open-source release is listed for Conductor. Emdash is open source (Apache-2.0).

Other comparisons with Conductor or Emdash

Machine-readable

For companies

Do agents find, use and choose your tools?

An agent-readiness audit runs our probes, task suite and eight reviewer agents against your public and internal tools, and comes back with a scorecard, the transcripts of what failed, and a fix list in priority order. From $2,500, re-run included. We never take payment to move a rank. We do help companies earn one.

Get an auditSee a sample report