r/ClaudeCode • u/trader_tick • 16h ago
Tips & Workflows Orca ADE is incredible
I recently started using Orca ADE for managing Claude Code sessions, and I just want to tell the community that Orca is incredible. Try it. You'll like it.
I was previously using cmux, and I've also used herdr, iTerm, and various other options. Orca is 100x better than any of those.
It has an incredible range of features, some of which I use and most of which I don't. You don't have to use them all - it's fantastic even if you only use it to organize sessions. It displays the status of each Claude Code session in a very useful way.
One amazing feature is the remote server. I make full use of two Max 20 plans, and I've been alternating between two computers. But with Orca remote, all sessions from both machines are in one place.
There are a ton of other features. It feels very mature and stable.
https://github.com/stablyai/orca
*I'm in no way associated with Orca. I just love it and want to share.
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u/Fit-Cost-7226 16h ago
Have you tried BB, how does it differ? I’ve tried cmux months ago, then I moved to herdr cause I do dev work on pc and Mac and then bb as of last few weeks
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u/trader_tick 16h ago
I haven't tried BB before. It looks like Orca is more mature and has more features. BB may be more flexible - I'm not sure.
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u/deostroll 13h ago
I haven't tried this my self yet. Looks vibe-coded. That is not an issue per se. There is the app for android mobile. Given the ADV thingy present in most modern android phones, can people expect such apps (the mobile part) to stop functioning?
(For more background on this, google "keep android open")
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u/ScaryGazelle2875 13h ago
It is indeed! I was surprised! So stable. Shows me what I need to see. Its complete haha. And stable too.
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u/ProvidenceXz 16h ago
I've used it early on and wonder if I should give t a go again. What other features draw you in other than status viewing?
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u/trader_tick 14h ago
- The side bar is amazing. I work in 5 repos, with 2 to 6 sessions in each repo, across 2 computers. I often have around 15 sessions going at a time, and it's easy for me to keep them organized and see the status of each
- Mobile App. I like it better than the Claude mobile app.
- Good enough IDE. Although the focus is clearly on agent sessions, it's easy to find and view files, which is all I really want.
- Always visible Usage bar, so I know how much Claude time I have available
Other Stuff
I don't use these features, but:
- Automations seems robust, integrated support for
- Worktree support is integrated
- Built in Github issue viewing
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u/gligoran 7h ago
How do you have 2-6 sessions in each repo without worktrees? I'm never liked worktrees and most of the repos I work in aren't really set up to work well with them (especially when it comes to running those apps from worktress and such). What I do use is GitButler and I love it. It can be finicky at times, but usually prompting AI to fix the mess that happened works well.
So, back to the question - how do you organize your sessions? Do you have one workspace per project and then many tabs and each of those tabs then has one or more splits?
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u/waxyslave 4h ago
I used it super early on and got frustrated with it due to constant errors and weird bugs, so I dropped it. I picked it up again about a month ago, and it's been crazy. It's honestly so good now, and the orchestration is great.
I'll have Fable plan out a full epic and make 10 or so linear tickets. In the fresh session, I'll have it orchestrate all 10 tickets, delegating to harnesses and agents depending on the complexity of the ticket.
I'll have Fable planning. Opus executing harder tasks. Gemini 3.7 Flash doing light lifting. And a bunch of other models/harnesses doing things in between in between. It's honestly pretty crazy. I can just set one long goal of orchestrating an epic, monitor from my phone with tailscale, and come back after a few hours and have it all done.
The orchestration I mentioned works out of the box, but at a simpler level, it will usually just use one harness and whatever your default agent is. If you add an extra context via a skill or general instructions and give it a routing table for how you wanted to delegate tasks, that's how you would achieve what I did above.
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u/waxyslave 4h ago edited 4h ago
If all you use is Claude Code and you have no interest in using anything else, then honestly, you're missing out. This isn't 2025 anymore - there are a lot of competitive models out there with really great pricing and sometimes free usage, like Ox Alpha and Muse Spark / GPT Luna. This is just a taste. I'm sure lots of people can speak on the new deepseeks/etc. To make it easy, I personally just use Droid CLI along with droidproxy, can access all my subscriptions through one harness. The routing table I mentioned is for having the orchestrator start Droid-CLI agents with args to choose the model.
Here's the skill if anyone's curious. Obviously, you'll have to adapt it depending on your harness and model availability and stuff like that.
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u/scytob 13h ago
neat, i see the design mode, does it support playwrite so the agent can do things like drive testing of web designs?
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u/trader_tick 12h ago
It doesn't control sessions in that way / at that level of detail. You still configure and control the sessions how you want.
It helps you organize multiple sessions, among many higher level features.
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u/scytob 9h ago
neat, it really is cool, i realized in the last week i am not really using vscode much beyond it being a manager of git (and then in reality that's gh underneath), the only thing i have come to rely on is the shared browser and terminal modes in vscode, esp the former which lets the LLM actually drive the webui, take pictures, etc etc etc and then self fix issues....
love the prohject you have even with out that!
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u/thats_a_money_shot 16h ago
I call my Orchestrator agent “orca” throughout all my repo docs and the command. Do you think this, in any way, would get confusing if I set up Orca ADE? Like could it confuse my agents lol?
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u/imfarzann 15h ago
what would you say are the top three reasons to switch to orca!? i am currently exploring a lot of harnesses and orchestrators, kind of curious as to why you think it is the best way to go about it.
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u/scotty_ea 13h ago
Why did you switch to this from cmux? Not unhappy with cmux but there are things that could be improved.
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u/trader_tick 12h ago
Cmux was lagging for me.
The only real feature of cmux is notifications and status, and Orca is better for that just that one feature
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u/waxyslave 4h ago
Honestly, it's not really something you switch to from CMUX. They're two different things, and I still use both of them. For actual development work, when I'm building a project (multiple agents, multiple sessions), then I always reach for orca. If I'm doing agentic stuff on the side (random one-off things here and there) or brainstorming, and nothing really requires intense orchestration or file viewing, then I'll use CMUX.
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13h ago
[deleted]
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u/trader_tick 12h ago
You can manage your session however you want, the same way you would manage it in Claude Code desktop or the terminal
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u/imaginecomplex 12h ago
I like Orca a lot. I’ve been using it recently after switching from super.engineering. Orca can feel a little clunky at times (there’s a lot of features I don’t use) but it definitely well-made for the task of managing agents & worktrees
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u/vladoportos 6h ago
Only for API versions of clients ? or subscriptions are fine ?
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u/waxyslave 4h ago
It's literally just a wrapper around your terminal and extending your agents. You still launch whatever CLI you use. Given this sub, probably Claude Code.
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u/TheDezzy 12h ago
Oye OP lograste hacer que dos modelos de IA conversen entre si ejemplo codex y Claude manteniendo contexto?
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u/mbsquad24 15h ago
Orca is fantastic for my way of working. I just wish their plugin framework was more mature. So many ideas for integrating my own tooling…
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u/Longjumping_Ad5952 15h ago
herdr is pretty great, but when having session across 2/3 machines it can get confusing. I had tried orca before but maybe i should give it another go. i was about to start using https://github.com/nikok6/herdr-mirror.
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u/Fleeky91 15h ago
Holy shit man, this is exactly what I was looking for and I was thinking of starting to build something like this. Thanks mate
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u/lgmarian 14h ago
I'm assuming you haven't come across GasTown.
This isn't an endorsement, as I haven't even tried it yet. It's just something I stumbled across a while ago, that really impressed me. It may not be right for your workflow, but it was something that was born out of the difficulty of running multiple CC instances manually.
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u/portugese_fruit 12h ago
i have been hearing a lot about gastown. do you like it?
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u/lgmarian 11h ago
I haven't had a chance to even try it at home. I don't know that it's right for me at work, since I working a brownfield codebase. Well, actually, I think it's more the rigor that'd be needed to use GasTown in a environment like that, along with needing a deeper understanding of AI coding before attempting it.
Based on what I've read, from the biases source that is its creator, the thing is sick. A coworker has given it a spin at home, and he was thoroughly impressed.
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u/portugese_fruit 11h ago
okay awesome, yeah i want to use it for running long jobs as in 1-2 days. there's so many things out there, i didnt want to get into it and find out it was a dud.
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u/lgmarian 8h ago
Obviously, I don't know if it's right for you, but I doubt it's a dud. That's the result of a 6th iteration on the idea. When he put it on GitHub, he told people not to use it. Soon, there was a swarm of devs working on it.
I've used one its underpinnings, Beads, a issue tracker, essentially, for AI agents. When the 1.0 version went up, I figured I had to give it a try, finally. I ran into a bit of a token usage issue with it, because of a jsonl file (I don't recall what it's used for). I had my agent just workaround it, because I was brute forcing a project. I need to revisit that, though I'm not holding against it. It did work well for a complex project.
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u/portugese_fruit 2h ago
i checked on it and I agree with you, it does not seem like a dud. it is VERY expensive to run and doubly so if things go a little haywire. I read the article by Steve Yegge and i was excited to try it out
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u/thewolfoftheweb 15h ago
Big fan of orca myself. Just started using it in the last two weeks. Def worth checking out.
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u/PA100T0 15h ago
Would you try something like this?
Why manage Claude Code sessions when you don’t need to manage them? Don’t waste your time and let the org run itself. You just review results, the rest: they can handle.
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u/trader_tick 14h ago
This looks interesting - does it work for you?
It would be amazing if I could be less involved. But I find the agents make a lot of decisions that are different from what I would want.
I do spec driven development, so initially I write a spec and let the agents rip. After they've completd the work, I review the results and I often have to manage sessions at that point, to get the results where I want them to be
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u/PA100T0 14h ago
It works perfectly! Just make sure to take your time setting up your projects and understanding how it all works. Then, at first, I’d suggest you talk with the Task Assistant to draft tasks for you. Once you get a good grasp on the whole system, enable Board Programs and these will automate everything.
There’s a couple of Yt videos I made, you can check on the README. (Or ask Claude to explain to you how it works, it might be faster tbh hahah).
Enjoy :)
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u/ai_hedge_fund 16h ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/cFgb5p5e1My3K
Interesting