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Head to head · Agent harnesses · October 2026 research run

Conductor vs Paseo

Paseo scores 62.1 (B) on agent readiness against Conductor's 41.3 (E), and leads in every scored category. 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 PaseoMohamed Boudra · Agent harness B62.1/100#575 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.

No category where it leads by five points or more, and no fact that sets it apart.

Watch for

No new downloads or sign-ups since 4 November 2026

Paseo B

Best for Developers who want parallel coding agents on their own machines with no telemetry, reachable from anywhere.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 50 against 25
  • Schema & documentation, 65 against 60
  • Agent ergonomics, 70 against 55
  • Security & auth, 58 against 45
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 0
  • Maintenance & community, 75 against 58
  • Transparency & trust, 68 against 53

Also in its favour

  • No key needed to call it
  • Open source

Watch for

Pre-1.0, at 0.15.3

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 Paseo +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).

Paseo 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 Paseo +25

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.

Paseo 50

Local software. Desktop builds, an Android APK, a Docker image and a Nix package (20). ci.yml on the repository; pass state not read (15). GitHub issues and pull requests weren't read (GitHub's pages refuse these sessions), so that line is scored absent (0). CHANGELOG.md (15). Version 0.15.3 (0). 20 + 15 + 0 + 15 + 0 = 50.

Maintenance & community Paseo +17

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.

Paseo 75

v0.15.3 and commits on 7 November 2026 (30). More than three releases in 90 days (20). GitHub issues and pull requests weren't read (GitHub's pages refuse these sessions), so that line is scored absent (0). Current builds (15). CI on push (10). 30 + 20 + 0 + 15 + 10 = 75.

Agent ergonomics Paseo +15

Conductor 55

Harness reading. Each task gets a workspace, branch, terminal and diff, with pull requests and merges from the app, and an API for integrations; not re-read in detail (55).

Paseo 70

Harness reading. A self-hosted daemon that agents can use to create worktrees, launch other agents and talk to them, scriptable from the CLI (70).

Transparency & trust Paseo +15

Conductor 53

Closed service with terms and privacy pages (15). The transition notice says when Cloud data deletion begins (20 November) and that all user data is deleted when the app shuts down in early 2027 (20 of 30). Dated shutdown notice (15 of 20). SOC 2 report on a trust portal, subprocessors not read (10 of 20). 15 + 20 + 15 + 10 = 60.

Paseo 68

Apache 2.0 for everything but third-party components (30). No telemetry and agents run on your machine (22 of 30). CHANGELOG.md, no deprecation policy (10). States no telemetry (20). 30 + 22 + 10 + 20 = 82.

Security & auth Paseo +13

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.

Paseo 58

Harness reading. The README says no telemetry, tracking or forced log-ins (30 of 30). Worktree per agent, on your own machine (10 of 20). No prompt-injection guidance (5). No audit log (5). SECURITY.md (8). 30 + 10 + 5 + 5 + 8 = 58.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runConductorPaseoEdge
Reliability16%202550Paseo +25
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.26065Paseo +5
Agent ergonomics13%16.25570Paseo +15
Security & auth14%17.54558Paseo +13
Payments & pricing10%12.5060Paseo +60
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.85875Paseo +17
Transparency & trust7%8.85368Paseo +15
Negative events≤1500
TotalE 41.3/100B 62.1/100

Facts side by side

FactConductorPaseo
KindAgent harnessAgent harness
VendorConductor (joining Meta)Mohamed Boudra
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 release2026-11-042026-11-07
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.

Paseo

A self-hosted, open-source workspace for running many coding agents on your own machines, scriptable from the CLI and reachable from phone, web or desktop, with no telemetry or forced log-in. It's pre-1.0 and run largely by one maintainer.

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

Paseo

  1. Run the daemon on the machine that has your tools and credentials, and connect from the clients
  2. Script runs from the CLI for repeatable agent jobs

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Conductor or Paseo?

Paseo scores 62.1 (B) on agent readiness against Conductor's 41.3 (E), and leads in every scored category.

Are Conductor and Paseo open source?

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

Other comparisons with Conductor or Paseo

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