alook vs squad
Self-hosted collaboration layer that turns local coding agents (Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode) into an always-on "AI company" — per-agent email, org chart, kanban, shared memory. — versus — Multi-agent terminal collaboration for AI CLIs: a manager, workers and an inspector — Claude Code, Gemini, Codex, OpenCode — coordinating through one-shot shell commands and SQLite. No daemon.
Both coordinate multiple local coding agents into a team; alook builds the full always-on 'AI company' (email, org charts), squad strips it to slash commands + SQLite you can hold in your head.
| alook | squad | |
|---|---|---|
| Stars | 944 | 605 |
| Forks | 144 | 60 |
| Language | TypeScript | Rust |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Last activity | yesterday | 1 months ago |
| Topics | coding, orchestration | coding, orchestration |
| Curated connections | 9 | 3 |
alook — the curator's take
Pick alook when you already live in Claude Code or Codex and want those agents running as a persistent little team — email in and out, a kanban they work through, schedules, memory that compounds — without writing a line of orchestration code. It's a product, not a framework: BYO agent, you're the CEO. NOT for building agents programmatically (that's LangGraph/CrewAI territory), and if you need budgets, governance, and audit over a heterogeneous fleet, paperclip is the heavier, control-plane take on the same idea. Young project — expect sharp edges and a moving roadmap.
squad — the curator's take
The unix-philosophy take on multi-agent coding: no daemon, no server, no framework — each agent is a terminal running the CLI you already use, coordinating through /squad slash commands backed by SQLite. Assign a manager, spin workers, add an inspector, watch them divide the work. Radically simpler to reason about than orchestration platforms, and it dies clean (every command is one-shot). NOT for production pipelines or unattended fleets — it's built for a human watching terminals; young (~600 stars) and quiet for weeks at review time, so kick the tires before making it a habit.