alternatives
Cate alternatives
TL;DR
Cate, by 0-AI UG (cate.cero-ai.com), is a free, MIT-licensed Electron app that lays terminals, code editors, browsers and file viewers out on one zoomable canvas. Start Claude Code, Codex or another supported agent CLI in a Cate terminal, and its panel tells you whether the agent is working, waiting or done. Worktrees get their own colored area on the canvas.
Three things push people away. Desktop telemetry is always on, with no switch. The features Cate leads with now, shared workspaces, the Cate Connect relay and the iPhone app, only exist in prereleases. And a canvas you have to keep tidy isn't how everyone likes to work.
Pane swaps the canvas for one pane per task, each with the agent's own terminal, a worktree, diffs and git. Paseo and Orca have phone apps, and Herdr keeps everything inside your terminal.
the alternatives
Every tool here runs several coding agents at once. The chips show where each one runs: green is native, amber has a catch, red is no.
1.Pane
Best for a fixed pane per task, so there's no canvas to arrange.
Every agent gets its own terminal and worktree, with Files and Changes in the inspector beside it and a browser tab you can add where Cate had a browser panel. Its analytics are on by default too, but you can opt out.
WindowsWSLmacOSLinux
2.Paseo
Best for phone, web and desktop clients with no telemetry at all.
Where Cate's iPhone app and relay are betas, Paseo already ships desktop, phone, web and CLI clients over an end-to-end encrypted relay. It collects no telemetry and needs no account.
WindowsWSLmacOSLinux
3.Orca
Best for a browser, SSH hosts and Android as well as iOS.
An MIT app that keeps Cate's browser-next-to-agents idea, adds iOS and Android apps, and runs agents in WSL repos. It takes about 1 GB on disk.
WindowsWSLmacOSLinux
4.Herdr
Best for the opposite of a canvas: a sidebar inside your terminal.
A free, Apache-2.0 multiplexer with a working, waiting or done sidebar and worktrees on request. It has no diff or commit tools. For WSL repos you run its Linux build inside WSL.
WindowsWSLmacOSLinux
which one should you pick?
stay with Cate if
- → you think spatially and like a project's terminals, browser and editors side by side on a canvas
- → your agents use the cate CLI to drive a browser panel, read another terminal or start other agents
- → you want one live workspace shared by a desktop, a remote box and an iPhone, and betas don't bother you
- → you want token cost plus Claude Code and Codex subscription limits in one usage view
pick pane if
- → you'd rather click between tasks than pan and zoom
- → you want each task's changes, commit and push right beside its agent
- → you want phone access today, through Remote Pane on your own machine
- → you need a native Windows ARM64 build
pane vs Cate at a glance
yespartly, or with a catchno
| pane8 yes · 1 partly · 0 no | Cate8 yes · 1 partly · 0 no | |
|---|---|---|
| basics | ||
| what it is | a desktop app | an Electron infinite-canvas IDE |
| platforms | ||
| Windows | yes, native (x64 and ARM64) | yes (x64) |
| repos inside WSL | yes, in the same app | yes, as a remote workspace |
| macOS | yes | yes, Apple silicon and Intel |
| Linux | yes (AppImage, .deb) | yes, x64 (AppImage, .deb, .tar.gz) |
| agents | ||
| agents | any CLI | any CLI; status for 7 named agents |
| everyday work | ||
| worktree per task | yes, by default | yes, one click |
| layout | a pane per task | panels on a zoomable canvas |
| remote and teams | ||
| remote and phone | Remote Pane in a phone browser | SSH workspaces; shared workspaces and iPhone app in beta |
| safety and setup | ||
| license | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| account needed | no | no |
basics
what it is
pane
Cate
an Electron infinite-canvas IDEplatforms
Windows
pane
Cate
yes (x64)repos inside WSL
pane
Cate
yes, as a remote workspacemacOS
pane
Cate
yes, Apple silicon and IntelLinux
pane
Cate
yes, x64 (AppImage, .deb, .tar.gz)agents
agents
pane
Cate
any CLI; status for 7 named agentseveryday work
worktree per task
pane
Cate
yes, one clicklayout
pane
Cate
panels on a zoomable canvasremote and teams
remote and phone
pane
Cate
SSH workspaces; shared workspaces and iPhone app in betasafety and setup
license
pane
Cate
MITaccount needed
pane
Cate
noCate facts checked on November 5, 2026 (Cate 2.0.5 stable, 2.1.0-beta.9 prerelease); Pane facts from Pane v2.4.157, with its agent presets rechecked on v2.4.214.
why people look for a Cate alternative
Telemetry with no off switch, headline features stuck in beta, and a canvas that's a matter of taste.
Cate's privacy page says packaged desktop builds send Sentry crash reports and usage analytics, and from version 1.3.1 on these "are always on and cannot be disabled." The iOS app has no third-party analytics SDK.
Shared workspaces, the iPhone app and Cate Connect ship only in the 2.1.0 prereleases. The newest stable build, 2.0.5, dates from September 30, 2026. Every client and remote runtime must also run the same Cate version.
Then there's the canvas. On Hacker News, one user found v1.0 too janky to use daily, and another expected every canvas to turn into a mess. An open issue says Cate keeps rendering at full speed while hidden or minimized (#749), and another asks why the side file browser vanished (#745). Status tracking covers seven named agents; anything else is a plain terminal.
moving from Cate to pane
Each worktree area on your canvas becomes a pane, and your agent logins come with you.
Cate already runs agents as their own CLIs with their own logins, so nothing changes there. In Pane, each task you'd have given a worktree area gets a pane instead, with its own branch and your .env and agent config copied in. Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and Cursor are one click away (Cursor on macOS, Linux and WSL), and Pi, Grok and Kiro run as custom commands.
The panels you kept beside an agent map to Pane's layout: plain terminal and browser tabs you add to the pane, and Files, Changes and git history (under Details) in the inspector beside it. Pane's status dots replace Cate's working and waiting states. If your agents used the cate CLI to start other agents, the orchestrator chat does that job.
our verdict
Cate is free and ambitious, and spatial thinkers should try it. If you'd rather have a tidy pane per task with review and git, Pane is the nearest match. Pick Paseo for a phone app with no telemetry, Orca for an all-in-one that also covers Android, and Herdr if you want to stay in your terminal.
how we checked
Desk research only. On November 5, 2026 we read Cate's README, changelog, releases, issues, site and privacy page. We didn't run Cate.
For Paseo, Orca and Herdr we relied on their docs, releases and issue trackers, researched on October 3, 2026 and rechecked on October 4.
- What we ran
- → Desk research: Cate's README, changelog, releases, issue tracker, site and privacy page, checked November 5, 2026. We didn't install or run it.
- Who wrote this
- We make Pane, so we have a stake in this. We checked every claim about Cate against its own site, docs, releases and issues on the dates above.
- Corrections
- If anything here is wrong or out of date, tell us and we'll fix it and update the date at the top. Open an issue on GitHub
- Sources
frequently asked questions
By Parsa Khazaeepoul, co-founder of Pane. .