What is Emdash?

Emdash is an open-source desktop application that lets developers orchestrate multiple coding agents simultaneously, each isolated in its own Git worktree. Part of YC W2026, it was founded by Raban von Spiegel (previously founded Soff, YC S24) and Arne Strickmann. The project has gained strong traction with 2,900+ GitHub stars, 220,000+ downloads, and 268 forks.

The platform supports 23+ agent CLIs including Claude Code, Codex, Gemini, Amp, Droid, and GitHub Copilot, making it fully provider-agnostic. Tasks start in 500-1000ms thanks to a pre-maintained reserve of worktrees. The workflow integrates directly with issue trackers (Linear, Jira, GitHub, GitLab) — developers can pass tickets to agents, review diffs in the built-in diff viewer, run CI/CD checks, create PRs, and merge, all without leaving the app.

A Kanban-style status board provides visual oversight of all running agents, and the "Best of N" feature lets you run identical tasks across multiple agents and compare results. For remote development, Emdash supports SSH/SFTP connectivity with secure credential storage. Built with Electron and TypeScript, it runs on macOS, Windows, and Linux and is installable via Homebrew.

Key features

Core capabilities this platform advertises.

Multi-agent parallel execution
Git worktree isolation
SSH remote support
Claude Code & Codex support
Open source

Strengths and tradeoffs

What this tool does well, and the limitations to keep in mind.

Pros

Fully open source (MIT) with zero cost and no vendor lock-in — 2,900+ stars and 220K+ downloads
True multi-agent parallelism with Git worktree isolation preventing conflicts between agents
Provider agnostic supporting 23+ coding agent CLIs from all major providers
End-to-end workflow from issue tracker to PR merge including diff review and CI/CD checks
Remote SSH support enabling use with cloud dev environments and powerful remote hardware

Cons

Plans & pricing

What's included in each plan, and how the tiers compare.

Open Source

Free

Full platform access
MIT license
23+ agent CLI support
All features included

View official pricing page

Common use cases

Developers using multiple coding agents

Parallel coding tasks
Multi-agent orchestration
Remote development
Large codebase refactoring

Using Emdash with Respan

Emdash orchestrates multiple coding agents, each making LLM calls. Respan can monitor the aggregate LLM usage across all agents running in Emdash, providing cost visibility and performance tracking for multi-agent development workflows.

Track total LLM costs across all coding agents orchestrated through Emdash
Monitor agent performance and compare output quality across different providers
Optimize multi-agent workflows by identifying cost and latency patterns via Respan