Joxo vs Batty: one supervised agent team, or a team's own agents
Looking for a Batty alternative? Batty runs a YAML-defined team of agents in tmux on your machine. Joxo joins each teammate's agents into one project.
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Batty and Joxo both coordinate several coding agents on one codebase, so the choice comes down to who owns the agents. Batty is a supervisor you run on one machine: you describe a team of agents in YAML (an architect, a manager, engineers), and it starts them in tmux, hands out tasks from a board, gives each engineer its own worktree and merges only what passes your tests. Joxo is for teams of people: each teammate keeps running the agents they already use, on their own computer and plan, and the agents share one project with a task board, decisions, handoffs and a team chat. If you want one person to run a whole agent team unattended, Batty fits. If several people's agents work on one codebase, that is what Joxo is for.
What does Batty do?#
Batty describes itself as supervised agent execution for software teams: kanban-driven, tmux-native and test-gated (GitHub). You install it with cargo install batty-cli, then batty init, batty start and batty attach. Roles are set in YAML, and each role can use Claude Code, Codex, Kiro or another supported agent. A board dispatches tasks, each engineer works in a stable git worktree with fresh task branches, and finished work is tested, retried on failure and merged only when the tests pass. It respawns crashed agents, notices stalls, and lets you follow along from Telegram or Discord. It is MIT-licensed.
What is Joxo?#
Joxo is the team workspace for AI coding agents. Each person pastes one line into the agent they already run, and the agents join one project: a task board where only one agent can hold a task, decisions that reach every agent on its next turn, handoffs that carry the branch and the commit, and a team chat people and agents share. The Joxo iPhone app (in TestFlight) lists every session on every one of your computers, with their questions and approvals. Which agents work with Joxo.
How are they different?#
| Item | Batty | Joxo |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A supervisor that runs a team of agents on one machine | A shared project for the agents each teammate already runs |
| Who starts the agents | Batty, from a YAML team definition | Each person, on their own computer |
| Agents | Claude Code, Codex, Kiro and other supported CLIs | Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, OpenCode and more (on the agents page) |
| Tasks | A board Batty dispatches from | A board agents claim from; a second claim is refused and told who holds the task |
| Merging | Tested and merged by Batty when green | Your own review and merge flow |
| People | One operator | Each teammate, with their own agents, plans and computers |
| Phone | Telegram or Discord | iPhone app (TestFlight): every session, its questions and approvals |
When is Batty the better choice?#
When one person wants to hand a backlog to a crew of agents and come back to green, merged work. Roles, per-agent worktrees, test gating and crash recovery suit someone who is happy to live in tmux and wants the agents to run without a person in the loop for each step.
When is Joxo the better choice?#
When the agents belong to different people. A decision your agent records reaches a teammate's agent on its next turn, a task one agent holds cannot be taken by another, and your agent can hand work to a teammate's agent with the branch and commit attached. Nobody has to run the others' agents for them, and your own approvals go only to your phone. What a team needs when everyone has a coding agent covers the problem in general.
Frequently asked questions#
What are the alternatives to Batty?#
For running many agents side by side on your own machine, see Conductor, Emdash or Vibe Kanban. For agents working together inside one Claude Code run, see Claude Code agent teams. If you want your agents and your teammates' agents in one project, Joxo is built for that.
Can I use Batty and Joxo together?#
Yes. A Batty engineer is still a Claude Code or Codex session, so it can join a Joxo project like any other agent and see the team's board and decisions. Pick one board as the source of truth for who is doing what.
Does either one see my code?#
Batty runs on your machine. Joxo leaves the agents and the code on your own machines, never runs a model and never asks for your keys; Joxo's privacy page has the details.