Robion vs. Orca
Orca (Stably AI) is an “agent development environment”: many agents from many vendors in parallel, each in its worktree, with a full editor, a browser and a GitHub workflow up to the merge queue. Robion is a cockpit for one agent, Claude Code, that watches more than code: a phone that decides, automations, a planner and a workshop for physical things.
Compiled from the other product’s public documentation, README and reviews as of 23 September 2026, not from hands-on use; Robion as of version 0.20.16. Corrections are welcome in the issue tracker. Send a correction ↗
- Orca
- Open source (MIT), macOS, Windows and Linux, native iOS and Android apps. 30+ agent CLIs — Claude Code, Codex, Gemini, Cursor, Copilot, OpenCode — switching between several Claude accounts, a Monaco editor and a Chromium per worktree, GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, Azure DevOps, Gitea and Linear. Its own words: not for non-developers.
- Robion
- Free, proprietary, macOS app plus a headless Linux server and a terminal TUI. Claude Code only, every task a real session in its own tab and worktree, panels the agent opens, a phone client inside your Tailscale network, automations with no model in the path, a planning Steward, a stream deck and a workshop for makers.
What Orca has and Robion does not
- Any agent
- 30+ CLIs and several Claude accounts with a live limit countdown. Robion drives Claude Code only.
- Three desktop platforms and native phone apps
- Windows and Linux desktops, iOS and Android apps with Orca’s own relay. Robion’s desktop is macOS; Linux gets the headless server and the TUI; the phone is a web app inside your tailnet.
- One-click fan-out
- One prompt to N agents in N worktrees, compare, merge the winner. In Robion an agent can start sibling tasks and wait for them (start_task, wait_task), but there is no fan-out button.
- Git hosting to the end
- Stacked PRs, auto-merge, a merge queue, logs of failed Actions, “fix the failing checks”, issue → worktree. Robion commits, pushes, merges locally and opens a PR; it reads issues from Jira, GitLab and GitHub and never writes to a tracker.
- A full editor and browser
- Monaco with quick-open and a real Chromium per worktree. Robion has a deliberately light editor and a sandboxed preview frame with a screenshot and element picker for the agent.
- Agent-to-agent orchestration
- Runs, tasks, dispatches, workers and gates across machines. Robion has no coordinator agent; fan-out is one agent starting a few tasks.
- Open source
- MIT, daily releases, five UI languages, voice dictation, hibernation of idle agents. Robion is free but closed, English and Czech.
What Robion has and Orca does not
- A phone that decides
- Allow or deny from the lock screen with end-to-end encrypted push and no third party; the Mac holds the permission for the phone; “allow and don’t ask again”, deny with a reason, the agent’s question cards, plan approval, the permission mode switch. Orca’s phone shows state, takes a text reply and commits.
- The agent builds its own UI
- A controls panel per project — buttons with hotkeys, sliders, tables, image tiles, a file or URL as viewport — a LOG panel with queries, reading other terminals, a grid of files, request_review. Orca gives the agent a CLI to open a file or a diff.
- Automations with no model in the path
- Tickets from Jira, GitLab and GitHub, cron and your own desk start a task, push to the phone, press a button or leave a proposal — zero tokens until a task runs. Orca’s automations are scheduled prompts through an agent.
- A Steward and an Inbox
- A planning session from a briefing the server wrote: proposals with a brief, a risk floor, autonomy levels, supervision of finished tasks, learning from your reasons; limits on tasks per day, quiet hours and proposals per run. Orca has nothing that plans for you or watches how much runs.
- A workshop for makers
- Parametric CAD rendered live with sliders, STEP, KiCad DRC and ERC, Gerber, DXF, a print-bed check, a design record with gates, the Maker Pack, a project type with no terminal. Orca rules the segment out.
- Stream deck, statistics, survival
- Permission keys on a stream deck, statistics from the transcripts, cost per design step, a timeline of who decided what from where; a pane host that survives an update or a crash of the app.
Who should pick which
Pick Orca if you run several different agent CLIs, need a Windows or Linux desktop, want a full editor and browser inside the tool, live deep in a GitHub workflow with merge queues and stacked PRs, or want open source.
Pick Robion if you are on Claude Code and a Mac, want to decide from your phone without a third-party relay, want work to start from tickets and the clock without spending tokens, want a planner on a short leash, or make physical things as well as software.
The two also differ in philosophy: Orca makes it easy to start more agents; Robion tries to need fewer — a planner, an Inbox and limits instead of N parallel sessions to review.