Lanes

tom@tomrochette.com (Tom Rochette) — Sun, 27 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Lanes is a freemium, native macOS workspace that runs many CLI coding agents as parallel real-PTY sessions, each on an issue and its own git worktree, with a board, editor, SQLite browser, and git client around them.

Lanes’ bet is that parallel agent work is a git problem first and a UI problem second, so it wraps every session in a real worktree and an issue card, and pairs the closed desktop app with an open, self-hostable MCP endpoint that manages what all your agents may reach.

What it is
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A native macOS app (Apple Silicon and Intel, macOS Ventura or later) from Lanes, installed with brew install --cask lanes-sh/lanes/lanes. Each issue is a board card that moves through Planning, Implementation, Review, and Done, and each card holds live PTY-backed terminal sessions (Claude Code and Codex detected and resumed natively, any other CLI as a plain shell), a generated worktree and branch, and an inline diff. Around the agent surface it ships a git client, a Monaco editor, a read-only SQLite browser, dependency links with cycle detection, quick commands, voice dictation, and a local MCP server so an agent can read the board and start sessions. The second half is Lanes Link, a self-hostable MCP endpoint (Apache-2.0, one endpoint you own) that holds accounts, memory, tasks, skills, identity, and a vault behind deny-by-default access profiles and a hash-chained audit log, plus Lanes Forms and per-second Lanes Compute GPUs. The app runs agents locally, never proxies model calls, and points sessions at whatever provider you configure, including local Ollama or LM Studio.

Status
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Active and iterating: version v0.49 shipped 2026-09-08, the macOS app is on Homebrew, and the changelog runs through September 2026. The public source repository, lanes-sh/app, shows about 271 stars as of 2026-09-27, created 2026-03-22, and is updated within days; the product also spans the Apache-2.0 lanes-sh/link endpoint and the hosted Lanes Forms and Compute services. The open question is provenance: the site says “open source from day one” and links both repositories, but the app repository carries no license metadata on GitHub as of 2026-09-27, whereas the Link endpoint is explicitly Apache-2.0.

Strengths
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The issue board is the differentiator: cards, columns, dependencies, labels, and per-project tabs make a fleet legible in a way terminal tabs do not.
Real PTY sessions in your own shell with your credentials, and session resume across restarts.
A full local coding surface around the agents (git client, Monaco editor, SQLite browser, diff), so review does not mean switching to an IDE.
Lanes Link is a genuinely separate, self-hostable product with 105 providers, access profiles, and an append-only audit log.
Local-first and model-agnostic: nothing is proxied, and any provider or local model works.

Cautions
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macOS only (Ventura or later), with no advertised Windows or Linux build; Linux users are directed to hand-managed worktrees.
The desktop app’s license is not declared in its repository metadata even though the site calls it open source; treat the claim as unverified for the app.
Sessions run as real terminals with your dotfiles and credentials, so assume anything you can do in Terminal an agent can do in Lanes.
GitHub and Linear are the only tracker integrations; everything else is deep links.
The pricing page mixes product tiers with GPU Compute, which complicates budgeting if you only want the desktop app.

Pricing
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Free ($0) for one user and unlimited local sessions with the full desktop app. Pro at $19/month covers up to 10 members, collaboration, higher Forms limits, and security features. Enterprise is custom for SSO/SAML, audit log, IP restrictions, and data residency. Lanes Compute is separate and billed per second per GPU; agents run on your own provider subscriptions.

Price history
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Date	Plan	Change	Source
2026-09-27	Free, Pro, Enterprise	Baseline: Free $0 for one user, Pro $19/mo for up to 10 members, Enterprise custom; Compute billed per second.	lanes.sh/pricing

Compared to
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Conductor: the closed, heavily funded Mac app with the deepest review flow; choose Lanes when the issue board and an open MCP endpoint matter more than cloud execution.
Orca: MIT and cross-platform with a mobile app; choose Lanes for a board-first macOS workflow and the broader Link access layer.
Helmor: Apache-2.0, local-first, and also macOS plus Windows; choose Lanes for the board and Provider/Forms/Compute family, Helmor for an open license and Windows support.

Bottom line
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Recommended for macOS engineers who want parallel agents organized as issues on a board with a real git and editor surface around them, and who want their agent access governed by one self-hosted endpoint. Not for Windows or Linux shops, and not for anyone who needs a verifiably open licensed desktop client.

Changes
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2026-09-27 - Created.

References
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https://lanes.sh/ - product overview, the Desktop and Link split, and trust claims
https://lanes.sh/docs - desktop board, sessions, worktrees, git, editor, MCP, and Link documentation map
https://lanes.sh/pricing - Free, Pro $19/month, Enterprise custom, and per-second Compute
https://lanes.sh/llms.txt - agent-readable product description, Link providers, APIs, and CLI install paths
https://github.com/lanes-sh/app - app repository, README, and the missing license metadata as of 2026-09-27
https://runany.dev/blog/lanes-parallel-ai-coding-workspace/ - independent walkthrough and critique of the worktree and board model

issue-board on tomrochette.com

Lanes

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issue-board on tomrochette.com

Lanes

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