Comparison
Foreman vs Claude Code Desktop
Pick Claude Code Desktop if…
You run Claude and only Claude. It is free, first-party, and new Claude Code capabilities land there first and natively — we find out when you do. There is no third party between you and the tool, no subscription beyond the one you already pay Anthropic, and nothing to evaluate. For a single Mac running a single vendor’s agent, that is a genuinely hard combination to beat, and most people should stop reading here.
Pick Foreman if…
You have crossed one of three specific lines. Each of these is something a first-party app structurally cannot do, rather than something it hasn’t got round to:
You run both Claude Code and Codex
One window, one permission model, one project memory and one cost view across both — and you route each task to whichever agent is better at it. Anthropic’s app will not run OpenAI’s agent, and OpenAI’s will not run Anthropic’s. That isn’t a gap either of them will close.
You use more than one machine
The Mac in the other room, or a headless build server over SSH, joins the same canvas — same sessions, same terminal, same cost view. A first-party desktop app sees the machine it is installed on.
You want attempts raced, not just run
Fan the same task out to four agents in isolated git worktrees, vary the model or effort per lane, compare the finished diffs and keep the winner — with the attempts you didn’t keep folded away rather than deleted.
Side by side
| Foreman | Claude Code Desktop | |
|---|---|---|
| Runs Claude Code | Yes | Yes |
| Runs Codex in the same window | Yes | No — it is Anthropic's app |
| Parallel sessions | Yes | Yes, since April 2026 |
| Other Macs and build servers | Yes — they join the same canvas | The machine it's installed on |
| Cost view spanning both vendors | Yes | Claude spend only |
| Price | Free on one machine · $19/mo for all of them | Free |
| Model usage included | No — your own account | No — your own account |
What both of them do
Parallel sessions, streaming transcripts, visual diff review and permission approval are table stakes in 2026 — both apps have them, and any comparison claiming otherwise is selling something. Neither includes model usage: you sign in with your own Claude account and pay Anthropic directly either way.
Foreman’s additions on top are the ordinary supervision work — project memory you curate, scheduled tasks, GitHub issue intake, one-click multi-lens project review, phone steering over an end-to-end encrypted relay, and per-session choice of subscription or API-key billing.
Do I have to choose?
No. Foreman spawns the official claude binary and uses the login already on your machine — it is not an API client and it never lifts your subscription token into one. Installing it changes nothing about your existing setup, and removing it leaves your CLI, your logins and your repos exactly as they were.
Free on macOS. Your agents, your keys, your machine.
Download for macOSComparisons on this page are accurate as of August 2026 — check each product’s own site for its current state.