# October vs Agent Orchestrator

Coordinate the work around your agents, from canvas to Kanban.

Checked 2026-10-29.

Agent Orchestrator is now called Orchestrator.inc. It supervises coding-agent sessions around isolated worktrees, pull requests, CI, and review feedback. October also coordinates multiple agents, with Runs for planned work and Agent Intercom for connected sessions, but makes the shared canvas a central place for people and apps as well. Both are relevant when launching an agent is easy and keeping the resulting work organized is hard. Compare their review loops and working surfaces rather than assuming either product only launches terminals.

## Choose October if
- You want the task’s agents, apps, browser previews, and teammates on a shared canvas.
- You want to arrange connections between sessions and follow work across different views.
- You want Runs to propose a team and plan that you can change before starting.

## Choose Agent Orchestrator if
- Your main workflow follows worktrees through pull requests, CI, and review.
- You want failed checks and requested changes routed back to the responsible worker.
- You want an Apache-2.0 local app with both structured chat and native terminal sessions.

## Side by side

| What matters | October | Agent Orchestrator |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Current name | October Desktop. | Orchestrator.inc; formerly Agent Orchestrator, also called AO. ([source](https://orchestrator.inc/)) |
| Main surface | Shared canvas, Kanban, and code views. | A project-and-session workspace with a status board, chat, terminals, and previews. ([source](https://docs.orchestrator.inc/)) |
| Parallel execution | Coordinate a team of separate agent sessions. | Workers run in isolated workspaces tied to branches and pull requests. ([source](https://docs.orchestrator.inc/)) |
| Agent choice | Keep different supported agents and their own accounts. | Choose agent harnesses per project, with chat support depending on the harness. ([source](https://docs.orchestrator.inc/)) |
| Feedback loop | Runs coordinate handoffs, review, approvals, and checks after you approve the plan. | Routes CI failures, review feedback, and merge conflicts back to the worker. ([source](https://orchestrator.inc/)) |
| Working location | Use local or cloud agents in one workspace, subject to plan and setup. | Local work runs on your machine; optional Cloud plans add hosted sessions. ([source](https://orchestrator.inc/)) |

## Both products coordinate real work

There is real overlap here. Orchestrator documents planning a task, starting workers, reviewing their pull requests, and returning failures to the session that owns the change. October’s Runs address planned handoffs and reviews, while its canvas keeps the wider set of tools and people visible. A fair comparison should use a task that reaches review, not stop after an agent produces a patch. Watch what happens when a check fails and when a reviewer asks for a correction.

## Choose the organizing idea you prefer

For a repository-heavy day, a session board linked to branches and CI can be an excellent organizing tool. For work that also involves a live app, a browser, a second repository, and another person, October’s spatial canvas offers a different way to keep the situation understandable. Neither choice removes the need to define scope and inspect changes. Evaluate where you find the task’s current state, how you send feedback, and whether the surrounding context stays easy to find.

## Questions

### Is Agent Orchestrator still maintained under that name?

Its official website says Orchestrator.inc is the new name for Agent Orchestrator. It identifies the same open-source application and ao CLI. We retain Agent Orchestrator in the comparison title so people following older references can find the relevant product.

### Does Orchestrator only run agents locally?

No. The official site documents local projects and paid Cloud projects with hosted agent sessions. Local use and Cloud use have different costs and setup. Check its current documentation rather than relying on older comparisons that describe it as local-only.

### Does October replace the agents underneath it?

No. October coordinates existing tools and accounts. Orchestrator also documents using installed coding-agent tools and their sign-ins. The choice is the supervision and collaboration environment around those agents, not which company owns the underlying model.

## Sources
- [October product overview](https://www.october.dev/)
- [Orchestrator product, rename, and plans](https://orchestrator.inc/)
- [Orchestrator introduction](https://docs.orchestrator.inc/)

[All comparisons](https://www.october.dev/comparisons)