Claude Code: Meta acquires Conductor, how to run several agents in parallel without it?

Meta has just bought Conductor, the little Mac app that lets you run several Claude Codes at the same time on the same project. Yes, the same Meta that, in October, had halved the number of its employees who use Claude Code. Make up your mind! For users, the announcement on Wednesday, November 4 comes with a countdown: Conductor's online service switches to read-only on Friday, November 13, and data starts being deleted on the 20th. If you use it, now is the time to pack up your things. And good news: Claude Code can do the same thing all by itself, with one command.

Conductor means orchestra conductor in English, and the conductor is leaving for Meta

What was Conductor for?

A coding agent is an AI like Claude Code or Codex that you give an entire task to: fix a bug, add a page, write tests. It reads your project, modifies the files, runs the commands, and comes back when it's done. The thing is, while it's working, you wait. So the idea that comes immediately is to launch several at once: one on the bug, one on the page, one on the tests.

Except if all three work in the same folder, that's three cooks in the same pot. One modifies a file while the other rereads it, the third runs the tests in the middle, and nobody knows who broke what anymore. Conductor handled that very simply: it gave each agent its own copy of the project, its own workspace. Each one cooks in its own corner, and you taste the dishes at the end. The app, launched in July 2025 by Charlie Holtz and Jackson de Campos according to Axios, ran Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and OpenCode, on your Mac or in the cloud.

Three agents in the same folder, or each one on its own copy of the project

Do you use it? Dates to note

Here is the schedule published by Conductor itself in its announcement:

• since November 4, no more sign-ups or downloads, and those who paid keep the paid features for free ;
• Friday, November 13, the cloud version switches to read-only: you can reread your old conversations and export, but you can no longer send messages, and current subscribers are refunded ;
• Friday, November 20, the cloud closes and data deletion begins ;
• early 2027, the Mac app stops in turn, and until then it receives the new models and critical bug fixes.

To get your work back, two steps. A right-click on a workspace in the cloud, then "Transfer to local", brings it back to your Mac with its conversations. And to download everything at once: Settings, then Account, then Export data. Conductor also promises that it has never sold your data or trained an AI with it, and that it is not going to start. On a work project, I still would not count on the evening of the 19th to export.

Two dates: read-only on November 13, deletion starting on the 20th

For what comes next, Charlie Holtz is joining Meta's AI lab and promises "something new" for early 2027, with "big, slightly crazy projects for the next interface". It looks a lot like the phrases we read every time a giant buys a small app. Meta already has its own coding agent, Muse Code, and nobody has said whether Conductor users will be sent there.

Doing it with Claude Code all by itself

Good news: the heart of Conductor isn't magic, it's a Git feature that has existed since 2015 and is called worktree. Git is the tool that keeps your code's history. A worktree is a second working folder connected to the same project: same files to start with, same history, but each one lives its own life. Exactly the separate work area from earlier.

And Claude Code knows how to do it on its own, with the -w option (for worktree). Concretely, in three steps. One: open two terminal windows, the black window where you type your commands, and go to your project folder. Two: in each window, start a session by giving it a task name:

# Terminal 1
claude -w correctif-connexion

# Terminal 2
claude -w page-contact

I tested it this morning. Each session creates its own folder in .claude/worktrees/, and its own branch: worktree-correctif-connexion and worktree-page-contact. A branch is a parallel version of your project. The two agents no longer get in each other's way: while the first repairs the login form, the second builds the contact page, and you, instead of waiting for the first one to finish before launching the second, have a coffee.

Three: when an agent has finished and you've reviewed its work, you bring it back into your main branch:

git merge worktree-correctif-connexion

To see who is working where, and clean things up once the session is closed and its work has been merged:

git worktree list
git worktree remove .claude/worktrees/correctif-connexion

Are you using Codex or another agent that doesn't have this option? Git does it without help. This command creates a neighboring folder monprojet-contact on a new branch page-contact, and you launch your agent in it:

git worktree add ../monprojet-contact -b page-contact

One Claude Code session per task, each in its own folder

What you lose compared with Conductor is the pretty interface that shows all your agents in a single window, and the button for reviewing their changes. What you gain is that nobody will ever be able to buy your git worktree command away from you. Me, with three Claude Code sessions open all day, that's clearly what I take away from this whole story.

The real lesson

A brilliant little app that solves a real problem, a giant that buys it, and sixteen days between the announcement on November 4 and the shutdown on the 20th for users. We've seen this movie a hundred times. The day your favorite work tool is nothing but a pretty layer placed over a basic function, learn the basic function. It stays.

Sources

• Conductor, November 4, 2026: Conductor is joining Meta, with the shutdown schedule (in English)
• TechCrunch, November 4, 2026: Meta buys AI coding startup Conductor (in English)
• Git documentation: git worktree (in English)

Article written with the help of Claude Code, reviewed and corrected by me.