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brat vs Claude Squad
Terminal UI for parallel coding agents
Claude Squad is the name most people reach for first when they want to run several AI coding agents at once — a terminal UI that spins each agent up in its own git worktree and tmux session so you can watch them work side by side. It is excellent at interactively supervising a handful of sessions. brat aims at the layer below that: a durable append-only event log, TTL lock leases, and a merge queue for driving larger fleets crash-safely, from scripts or a web dashboard as well as a terminal. They overlap on "parallel coding agents" but optimise for different scales and different failure modes. This is not zero-sum.
| feature | brat | Claude Squad | winner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Primary shape | Rust CLI + optional bratd HTTP daemon | Go terminal UI (TUI) | tie |
| Isolation | Per-actor data directories + TTL locks | Git worktrees + tmux sessions | tie |
| Durable state | Append-only WAL in refs/grite/*; deterministic replay | Git worktree + tmux session state | brat |
| Crash recovery | Rebuilds the materialized view by replaying the event log | tmux sessions persist across detach; no append-only event log | brat |
| Merge queue | Refinery role with configurable rebase/squash/merge policy | Review and merge each session by hand in the TUI | brat |
| Target agents | Claude Code, Aider, OpenCode, Codex, Continue, Gemini, gh copilot | Claude Code, Codex, Aider, Gemini and other CLI agents | tie |
| Interface | CLI + web dashboard via bratd | Interactive terminal UI | Claude Squad |
| Best for | Large crash-safe fleets with a merge queue | Interactively supervising a handful of parallel sessions | tie |
pick brat when
- ▸You need durable state that survives a machine crash, not just a tmux session you can detach from
- ▸You want an ordered merge queue (the Refinery role) that runs your CI and lands work in sequence
- ▸You want an append-only audit log of every task, session, lock, and merge in refs/grite/wal
- ▸You want to drive the fleet from scripts, an HTTP daemon, or a web dashboard — not only an interactive TUI
- ▸You need TTL lock leases so a crashed session never leaves a zombie lock behind
pick Claude Squad when
- ▸You want a polished, interactive terminal UI to watch a handful of sessions live
- ▸You like reviewing each agent's diff by hand before you merge it
- ▸You prefer git worktrees plus tmux — tools you already know and trust
- ▸You want the most widely-adopted, most-cited name in this category today
still deciding?
These are not zero-sum. Run brat for the agent fleet on your main repo, keep Claude Squad for what it's already good at, and let the tools earn the work they do best.