Stop coding agents from working past each other.

Overgent is an open-source coordination layer for parallel coding agents.
It catches conflicting assumptions, overlapping work, and duplicated implementations
while the work is happening—not after it lands.

Local-first · Works without AI · Apache 2.0 · Self-hostable

Get started · How it works · Documentation · Self-hosting

Your agents can disagree without touching the same file

Agent A changes an authentication contract. Agent B, working in another part of the repository, builds against the old contract. Agent C starts implementing a similar feature under a different name.

Git may see three clean branches. The codebase still has three coordination problems.

Overgent maintains a live model of what each agent is trying to do, what it has read, what it is changing, and what it depends on. It compares those workstreams as they evolve and routes a compact, evidence-backed correction only to the sessions that need it.

Agent A changes a shared contract
                │
                ▼
    Overgent detects the divergence
          ┌─────┴─────┐
          ▼           ▼
 Agent B relied    Agent C is
 on the old API    unrelated
          │           │
          ▼           ▼
 correction at      silence
 the next turn

This is air traffic control for coding agents: shared awareness and early warning, without taking over the aircraft.

What Overgent catches

Situation	What Overgent sees	What happens
Two sessions touch the same code	Paths, symbols, or claims overlap	A direct-collision finding appears with its evidence
A contract changes after another session read it	The exported contract fingerprint no longer matches the session's read set	The affected session receives a stale-assumption warning
Two agents build the same behavior in different places	Their reported intent and changes overlap in meaning	Optional semantic judgment identifies likely duplicated work
Workstreams depend on the same package, schema, route, or API	Shared dependency evidence connects them	Overgent warns the relevant workstreams, not the whole Project
One agent is waiting for another	A declared dependency gains stable contract or verification evidence	The waiting session learns that the dependency is ready

Every finding carries a plain-language reason, provenance, confidence, and the workstreams it affects. Similarity is candidate evidence, never unexplained proof. Low-confidence activity stays quiet.

A stale assumption: the contract moved after this session read it, with the old and new signature and who changed it.

Built for one developer or a small team

Overgent is useful from the first parallel session. Run Codex and Claude Code side by side on one Mac, coordinate several worktrees, or share a Project with a small team working in the same repository.

It is designed for the moment agent throughput outruns human coordination: startup sprints, hackathons, large refactors, cross-layer features, and any repository where several fast workstreams are active at once.

Codex and Claude Code adapters are supported today. Git observation and manual intent remain available when an adapter is absent. Cursor has a configuration adapter, but its live hook behavior is not yet qualified.

How it works

1. Observe locally. The per-user Go service watches registered Git workspaces and receives bounded lifecycle, intent, read, and change evidence from connected agents.
2. Detect divergence. Deterministic checks find path, symbol, contract, and dependency relationships without a model. An optional Project-configured provider can judge semantic duplication and architectural conflict.
3. Route the correction. Overgent sends a small, versioned coordination brief to affected sessions through supported hooks or MCP. Unrelated sessions receive nothing.
4. Record the outcome. People resolve or dismiss findings in the Project; the resulting decision is delivered once to each affected session and kept in History.

Overgent coordinates existing coding-agent harnesses. It does not run a model loop, execute tools, approve permissions, edit code, or merge, rebase, reset, or otherwise mutate anyone's worktree.

Quickstart

macOS and Linux:

curl -fsSL https://overgent.com/install.sh | sh
cd /path/to/your/repository
overgent init

Windows, in PowerShell:

irm https://overgent.com/install.ps1 | iex

Desktop applications for all three platforms are at overgent.com.

Platform	Status
macOS 12+, Apple silicon	Qualified on real hardware
Linux x86-64	Ships and passes its tests in CI; not yet run on a Linux desktop by us
Windows 10 1809+, x86-64	Ships and type-checks in CI; not yet run on a Windows machine by us

Windows binaries are not code-signed yet, so SmartScreen warns on the desktop app and the PowerShell installer refuses to run until a signed build exists. Until then, Windows users can download the desktop app and CLI archive directly from the latest release.

overgent init guides you through creating a local Project, connecting detected agents, and opening the workroom. A local Project uses the bundled loopback backend: it requires no account, no API key, and no network connection.

Then start two supported agent sessions in the registered repository. Overgent discovers each session as its own workstream. From a terminal, you can ask the same question as the workroom:

overgent status
overgent watch
overgent open

Use overgent setup codex or overgent setup claude to connect an adapter later. Existing agent sessions must restart once after setup so they can load the integration.

Team Projects

Create a team Project when the work spans people or computers:

overgent init --team

The hosted default is operated from the same public code in this repository. You can instead deploy that backend to your own Convex project or infrastructure; see self-hosting.

Local-first by architecture

Raw material may be inspected on your machine to derive coordination evidence. The wire is the privacy boundary.

For a team Project, Overgent may sync bounded coordination facts such as intent, safe repository-relative paths, exported contract fingerprints, dependency claims, bounded change summaries, finding evidence, and delivery state.

It does not sync raw source files, raw diffs, Git objects, transcript files, environment values, credentials, private keys, raw tool results, or command output. A mandatory, non-disableable classifier rejects secret-bearing candidates before they cross the wire. Pausing a workspace or Project stops new outbound sharing synchronously.

The complete boundary, retention policy, and threat model are public in security and privacy.

AI is optional—and belongs to the Project

Structural coordination works with no model and no key. A Project owner can add an Anthropic or OpenAI-compatible provider for semantic judgment, and an OpenAI-compatible embedding provider for broader related-work retrieval.

printf '%s\n' "$ANTHROPIC_API_KEY" | overgent ai set \
  --judgment-provider anthropic \
  --judgment-model claude-sonnet-5 \
  --judgment-key-stdin \
  --embedding-provider deterministic \
  --embedding-model deterministic-v1

Provider failure never disables deterministic evidence. Project keys are encrypted by the selected backend, never returned by reads, and never mixed into coordination events. See AI providers.

Project status

Overgent is beta software. Apple Silicon macOS 12+ is the only platform qualified on real hardware, and its CLI, background service, local backend, and desktop beta are covered by the signed-release and clean-machine lifecycle gates.

Linux and Windows ship as of v0.1.1. Both build and pass their documented automated checks, and the Linux installer lifecycle passes end to end in a container, but neither has been run on a native desktop by us: the full install, credential store, service recovery, update, rollback, and uninstall lifecycles are unverified there. Windows additionally has no code-signing certificate yet. Intel macOS is also unqualified. Please report what breaks. See release qualification.

Current adapter fidelity is explicit in the product: configured is not the same as observed, unavailable semantic judgment is not presented as full intelligence, and missing evidence is never turned into an all-clear.

Why open source

Overgent runs beside repositories, coding agents, credentials, and developer tools. You should be able to inspect what it reads, what it derives, what it sends, and how the backend authorizes and retains that data.

The installed client, local service, adapters, protocols, dashboard, core backend, coordination engine, evaluation harness, installers, and release workflows are public under Apache 2.0. Production credentials, private operational records, and customer data do not belong in this repository. Read the open-source and trust strategy.

Build and contribute

Read the documentation index in order before implementation. The repository uses Go 1.26 and Node 22 with pnpm 11.

go test ./...
go vet ./...
pnpm install --frozen-lockfile
pnpm typecheck
pnpm test
pnpm build
pnpm protocol:generate
pnpm protocol:check

Start with local development, then see contributing, adapter development, and security reporting.

Overgent is a coordination harness, not a coding-agent harness. If an extension would make Overgent own an agent's model loop, repository editing, shell/test execution, model routing, or permission system, it belongs in the coding agent—not here.