Joxo vs Emdash: your parallel agents or your team's agents
Looking for an Emdash alternative? Emdash runs many coding agents in parallel on your machine. Joxo joins each teammate's own agents into one project.
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Emdash and Joxo both work with the coding agents you already have, so the choice comes down to who the agents belong to. Emdash is a desktop app for running many agents at once: each task gets its own git worktree, and you review the diffs and merge what works. Joxo is for teams whose agents need to work together: each teammate's agents, in the terminal or editor they already use, share one project with a task board, decisions, handoffs and a team chat, and you approve them from your iPhone. If you want to run a fleet of your own agents side by side, Emdash fits. If several people's agents work on one codebase, that is what Joxo is for.
What does Emdash do?#
Emdash is a desktop app for Mac, Windows and Linux that runs coding agents in parallel, each task in its own git worktree (emdash.com, GitHub). It finds the agent CLIs you have installed and works with 25+ of them, including Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, OpenCode, Amp and Copilot. It can schedule repeat work, preview apps in a built-in browser, run tasks in local, remote or cloud environments, and keep a library of prompts, skills and MCP servers for your agents.
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 | Emdash | Joxo |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A desktop app that runs your agents in parallel | A shared project for a team's agents |
| Who runs the agents | Emdash, one worktree per task | Each person, in the terminal or editor they already use |
| Agents | 25+, including Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Amp | Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, OpenCode and more (on the agents page) |
| Phone | None | iPhone (TestFlight): every session, its questions and approvals |
| Teams | One person's agents | Each teammate's agents in one project: task board, decisions, handoffs, chat |
| Coordination between agents | Separate worktrees; you review each diff | Claims on the board; a second claim is refused and told who holds the task |
When is Emdash the better choice?#
When one developer wants to try several fixes at once, compare the diffs and merge the best, all from one window. Scheduled agent work, a built-in browser preview and code you can change yourself also point to Emdash.
When is Joxo the better choice?#
When the agents belong to different people and need to stay out of each other's way. Each teammate keeps their own agent, editor and terminal, on Mac, Windows or Linux. 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. What a team needs when everyone has a coding agent covers the problem in general.
Frequently asked questions#
What are the alternatives to Emdash?#
To run many agents in parallel on one Mac, see Conductor, Nimbalyst or Vibe Kanban. For many agents steered from your phone, see Vicoa. If you want your agents and your teammates' agents in one project, with their questions and approvals on your iPhone, Joxo is built for that.
Can I use Emdash and Joxo together?#
Yes. A Claude Code or Codex session that Emdash starts is still that agent in a project folder, so it can join the team's Joxo project, claim tasks and read decisions like any other.
Does either one see my code?#
Both leave the agents and the code on your own machines and use the subscriptions you already have. Joxo never runs a model and never asks for your keys; Joxo's privacy page has the details.