Two worktree tools for parallel coding agents trend together

Two small Rust tools showed up on the same trending board on September 12, both solving the same problem: keeping AI coding agents from stepping on each other's files.

Run two or three coding agents against one repo and they'll clobber each other's uncommitted changes the moment they touch the same file. Git worktrees fix that by giving each agent its own checkout that shares the repo's history.

workmux pairs a git worktree with a tmux window for each agent and picked up 90 stars that day. max-sixty/worktrunk gained 44 on the same board. Neither tool is new, and neither invented the idea. What they automate is the setup: you'd otherwise run git worktree add and switch terminal panes by hand every time you spin up another agent.

One worktree per agent now spans a single binary and a 67,067-star framework, Orca. When the same pattern shows up at both ends of that range on the same day, it reads as the default answer to the problem rather than something still being worked out.

I'd still reach for the single binary. A tmux wrapper does one job and gets out of the way. Bigger frameworks tend to add abstractions for things you didn't ask for, and the more moving parts a tool has, the more it breaks when you're three agents deep and just trying to keep your terminal panes straight. Watch whether workmux's 47 open issues turn into feature requests for the kind of scaffolding Orca already carries. That's the tell that the single binary is drifting toward becoming a framework itself.