Desktop app · in development

Your agents, tasks and reviews live in the project.

Coban keeps projects, coding agents, tasks, the terminal, Git changes, review and project knowledge in one desktop workspace. Start with a single agent; the same model of work extends to agent teams later.

The Coban desktop workspace: project tabs, task list, agent run and change review in one window. — Design preview. Screens use demo data; the shipped build will differ.

Runtime: Native desktop shell with a local service. No browser tab, no remote session to keep alive.
Data: Projects, tasks and events are stored on your own machine.
Agents: Codex first, then Claude and other ACP-capable agents, measured one at a time.
Status: Early development. Features appear when their stage lands, not before.

How it works

Open a task, run the agent, see what happened, continue tomorrow.

That loop is the whole first release. It should be useful even if you never switch providers.

Open a project

Point Coban at a repository. It becomes a persistent project with its own tasks, history and settings — not a chat session that disappears.

Run an agent

Give the task to a coding agent. Permission-sensitive actions queue in an approval list instead of running quietly in the background.

Follow the work

Files touched, commands run, tests, diffs and decisions show up as they happen. The local service is the authority on run state, not the window.

Review and continue

Read the change as one package, approve or send it back, and pick the task up later with its context intact.

In the workspace

Six parts of the same project, not six tools.

Agent output is only useful if you can inspect it. Every run leaves files, tests, diffs and decisions you can read.

Tasks

A task is the unit of work: prompt, run history, produced files, tests and decisions stay attached to it. Close the app, come back tomorrow, open the task and keep going.

Review

Changes, test output and open questions arrive as one package you read in a single place. Approval is bound to a specific diff — a later change invalidates it.

Terminal

A real PTY next to the agent, not a log viewer. Run the build yourself, watch the process the agent started, keep both in the same project window.

Git and worktrees

Each run works in its own worktree, so parallel attempts do not fight over your working tree. Diffs are read against the branch the run actually started from.

Memory

Project knowledge the agent may read: conventions, decisions, known traps. AGENTS.md and CLAUDE.md stay your files — Coban proposes patches, you approve them.

Agents and providers

Start with one agent. The same task model extends to agent teams with structured handoff and to defined flows, in later stages.

Agent providers

One integration at a time, tested before it is offered.

A capability documented by a provider still has to hold for the version, account type, platform and permission settings you actually run.

Provider	Where it stands	Transport
Codex	First real integration. Local app-server with a structured API and generated schemas; the installed binary version is pinned.	app-server
Claude	Second path, through the documented SDK or a maintained ACP bridge. No dependency on private control messages, and no third-party use of your claude.ai session.	SDK / ACP
OpenCode	Documented stdio protocol. Compatibility is measured per provider rather than assumed from the protocol.	ACP
Others	ACP negotiates capabilities per version, so support is tested one provider at a time. An incompatible provider is never silently downgraded to a wider-permission mode.	ACP

Local-first

Your code, your machine, your record of what happened.

Coban runs on your computer and stores its data there. Remote access and team sync are later stages, and they will be opt-in when they arrive.

Local storage

Projects, tasks, runs and events live in a local database. Nothing is uploaded for the product to work.

Your provider account

You bring your own agent access. Credentials go to the system keychain, not to a Coban server.

Honest boundaries

A separate worktree isolates working files; it is not an operating-system sandbox, and we will not describe it as one.

Approvals you can see

Permission-sensitive actions wait in a queue. Guarantees are claimed only for actions that can genuinely be checked.

Waitlist

Tell us where to send the first build.

Early access goes out to people working with more than one repository and reviewing agent changes themselves. If that is you, a line about your setup helps.