rota

rota vs Claude Squad

Claude Squad is a terminal app that manages several AI coding agents in separate workspaces. Each session gets a tmux session and a git worktree on its own branch, and a TUI lists them, previews their output and shows diffs. Checked 2026-10-26 against Claude Squad 1.0.20 (released 2026-08-20; it is also the latest commit).

The short version

  • Pick Claude Squad when you want to drive several agents by hand from one terminal window: start sessions, watch them, attach to reprompt, push a branch when you like the diff.
  • Pick rota when you want the queue, the verification and the merge handled by a process: issues assigned to workers, a test run on the merged result, then a merge.
  • Both give each agent a git worktree. Claude Squad stops at a branch you push. rota continues through review, gate and merge.

Side by side

  Claude Squad rota
What it is A TUI (cs) that runs agents in tmux sessions A Go binary plus /rota-* skills that run inside Claude Code or Codex
Unit of work A session, started with an optional prompt A backlog item (or tracker issue), one per worker at a time
Parallel agents Many sessions in one window; limits not documented Orchestrator plus two to five standing workers (parallel rounds)
Isolation tmux session plus git worktree and branch per session One git worktree per worker, reused across issues; per-slot ports and database suffix
Verification before merge You review changes in the diff tab before pushing; no test run documented Merge gate runs test.full on a scratch merge of the PR (review and ship)
Who merges You. s commits and pushes the branch to GitHub; merge is not documented The orchestrator, through the gate. Workers open PRs and never merge
Backlog / tracker None documented BACKLOG.md, GitHub, GitLab, Jira, Linear or It’s a Plan (issue backend)
Memory across sessions Not documented KNOWLEDGE.md and DECISIONS.md in the repo (learning)
Agents and models Claude Code by default; Codex, Gemini and Aider named; any command via -p or a profile Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode
Interface Terminal UI Terminal; skills inside the agent, optional herdr or tmux tabs
Platforms Not documented; needs tmux and gh Linux and macOS; Windows through WSL2
Install brew install claude-squad or an install script; binary is cs brew install l4ci/tap/rota or the install script, then rota skills install
License AGPL-3.0 MIT

Where Claude Squad is stronger

  • Immediacy. One command, no project setup, no backlog. Press n, type a prompt, and an agent is running in its own worktree.
  • A live overview. The TUI shows every session with a preview and a diff tab. You attach with Enter to reprompt and detach with ctrl-q. rota’s tabs and rota round status suit a queue more than a conversation.
  • Any agent. -p or a profile launches any CLI program, so local and niche agents work. rota supports three harnesses.
  • Pause and resume. c commits and pauses a session; r resumes it.
  • Auto-accept. --autoyes (experimental) accepts prompts for Claude Code and Aider. rota’s autonomy is set per level in config (autonomy).

Where rota is stronger

  • A gate on the merged tree. rota worker gate runs your full suite on a scratch merge before anything lands. Claude Squad leaves checking and merging to you.
  • A queue. rota round assign hands issues to idle workers, rota round wait reports who needs you, and file-overlap checks keep two workers off the same files (parallel rounds).
  • Runs without you. rota keepalive run and the hooks carry a round across context limits and restarts (unattended rounds).
  • Several accounts. round.accounts spreads workers over separate Claude config homes and avoids an account that is cooling down.
  • Trackers. The backlog can live in GitHub, GitLab, Jira or Linear, and workers pick up issues that carry acceptance criteria.
  • Durable knowledge. /rota-learn and /rota-decide keep gotchas and hard rules in the repo, and the reviewers read them back (learning, decisions).
  • Review. /rota-review runs Spec and Standards reviewers against the issue before the gate.

Sources

More comparisons: how rota compares.

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