alternatives
Dorothy alternatives
TL;DR
Dorothy (dorothyai.app, the open-source repo Charlie85270/Dorothy) is a free, MIT-licensed Electron app that runs many coding agents at once, each in its own terminal. A "Super Agent" creates and steers the others. It adds a Kanban board, GitHub and JIRA pollers that spawn agents, cron schedules, and control from Telegram or Slack. It isn't DorothyAI, the patent-search company.
People look elsewhere because every release ships Apple Silicon Mac builds only: no Windows, no Linux and no Intel Mac. Two Linux pull requests from the community were closed without merging. One user reports that the Super Agent often doesn't dispatch work, and the pace has slowed to three releases in seven months.
Pane keeps two things Dorothy is built around: many agents in real terminals, and a lead agent that hands out the work. It adds a git worktree per task (a separate copy of your repo on its own branch), and it runs on Intel and Apple Silicon Macs (macOS 12 and up), Windows, WSL (Linux inside Windows) and Linux.
the alternatives
Each pick stands in for a different part of Dorothy: the Super Agent, the Kanban, the GitHub and JIRA pollers, or Telegram control from your phone. The chips show where each one runs: green is native, amber has a catch, red is no.
1.Pane
Best for an orchestrator and a worktree per task, on every OS.
A Session, Pane's lead-agent chat, creates a pane per task and steers it, while you watch each agent's own terminal. Every task gets its own worktree and branch. There's no Kanban or JIRA poller built in. Free, AGPL-3.0, no account.
WindowsWSLmacOSLinux
Best for a board of agents, if Dorothy's Kanban is what you'd miss.
Its live Kanban is the nearest thing to Dorothy's board. Every card is an agent in its own worktree, and failing CI or review comments go straight back to that agent. iOS and Android apps let you check in from your phone. Apache-2.0. WSL repos are out, since agents can't run there.
WindowsWSLmacOSLinux
3.Emdash
Best for Dorothy's pollers and cron jobs, in one app.
Emdash pulls tasks from 12 issue trackers, GitHub and Jira among them, and runs prompts on a cron schedule as automations. About 35 agents work in worktrees, locally or over SSH. Apache-2.0, and you can skip signing in. Repos inside WSL aren't supported.
WindowsWSLmacOSLinux
4.Paseo
Best for your agents on your phone, if Telegram control is what you'd miss.
Paseo's phone app takes the place of Dorothy's Telegram bot. A background service on your machine runs 40+ agents, and you steer them from iOS, Android, a browser, the desktop app or a CLI. It's Apache-2.0, asks for no account and sends no telemetry. In our October test, its Windows app couldn't start agents in a WSL repo.
WindowsWSLmacOSLinux
which one should you pick?
stay with dorothy if
- → you're on an Apple Silicon Mac and want everything free, MIT and without an account
- → you want GitHub or JIRA items to spawn agents on their own, and cron schedules
- → you want to start and check agents from Telegram or Slack
- → you'll use its shared Vault, Google Workspace tools and 40+ MCP tools
pick pane if
- → your Mac has an Intel chip, or you work on Windows, Linux or inside WSL
- → you want each task in its own git worktree without setting it up yourself
- → you'd rather watch the lead agent hand out work than wonder whether it did
pane vs dorothy at a glance
yespartly, or with a catchno
| pane10 yes · 0 partly · 0 no | dorothy4 yes · 3 partly · 3 no | |
|---|---|---|
| basics | ||
| what it is | a desktop app | a macOS app |
| platforms | ||
| Windows | yes, native (x64 and ARM64) | no |
| repos inside WSL | yes, in the same app | no |
| macOS | yes, macOS 12 and up | Apple Silicon only |
| Linux | yes (AppImage, .deb) | no |
| agents | ||
| agents | any CLI | 6 listed agents |
| how agents run | the agent's own terminal UI | the agent's own terminal UI |
| everyday work | ||
| worktree per task | yes | mentioned, not documented |
| safety and setup | ||
| license | AGPL-3.0, open source | MIT, open source |
| price | free | free |
| account needed | no | no |
basics
what it is
pane
dorothy
a macOS appplatforms
Windows
pane
dorothy
norepos inside WSL
pane
dorothy
nomacOS
pane
dorothy
Apple Silicon onlyLinux
pane
dorothy
noagents
agents
pane
dorothy
6 listed agentshow agents run
pane
dorothy
the agent's own terminal UIeveryday work
worktree per task
pane
dorothy
mentioned, not documentedsafety and setup
license
pane
dorothy
MIT, open sourceprice
pane
dorothy
freeaccount needed
pane
dorothy
noDorothy facts checked on November 5, 2026 (1.2.10), from its site, README and releases. Pane facts checked against Pane v2.4.214.
why people look for a dorothy alternative
Apple Silicon Macs only, a Super Agent that skips work, and slowing releases.
All 38 releases ship arm64 Mac assets only. The site's download link returns the Apple Silicon DMG even when you ask it for Windows, Linux or Intel. In issue #15, which asks for Ubuntu and Windows, the maintainer wrote on March 10, 2026: "I'll try to release the Ubuntu version this month". Two community Linux PRs were later closed unmerged. A Windows PR has been open since October 8.
In issue #45 a user wrote that the Super Agent "does dispatch work to other agents, but most of times it does not", and that "I have to tell superagent to close the task explicitly." That issue is still open. After 29 releases in February and March 2026, only three shipped in the next seven months, and the latest, 1.2.10, only updates Electron and Node. The README is still the only documentation.
moving from dorothy to pane
Your agent CLIs and logins come with you. Each Dorothy agent becomes a pane, Pane's word for one task.
Dorothy gave each agent its own terminal, and so does Pane, so Claude Code, Codex, Gemini, Grok, OpenCode and Pi all come along with their current logins. Claude Code and Codex start with one click (Cursor too, except on native Windows), and the rest run as custom commands. Every new pane gets a fresh worktree and branch, and Pane copies your .env files and folders like .claude into it.
In place of the Super Agent, start a Session and give it the goal. It creates a pane for each task, and you can open any of them to see what that agent is doing. For Dorothy's cron schedules, Pane's Loops (added in v2.4.201) run an agent or command on a cron schedule, each run in its own new pane. Pane has no built-in Jira or Slack, so keep Dorothy's pollers if you depend on them.
our verdict
Dorothy is a generous free app with a big automation layer: pollers, schedules, a Kanban and chat control. Pane is the most direct alternative if you're off Apple Silicon, or want each task in its own worktree with a lead agent you can watch. Pick Agent Orchestrator for a Kanban of agents, Emdash for issue trackers and schedules, and Paseo to run agents from your phone.
how we checked
On November 5, 2026 we read Dorothy's homepage and tried its download link for each platform, then went through the README, all 38 GitHub releases, and its pull requests and issues. Nothing was installed.
What we say about Agent Orchestrator, Emdash and Paseo comes from our October 2026 research file on each one. The Paseo WSL result is from our hands-on test on October 4, 2026.
- What we ran
- → Desk research on November 5, 2026: Dorothy's homepage, README, releases, pull requests and issue tracker. Nothing was installed for this page.
- Who wrote this
- We make Pane, so we have a stake in this. We checked every claim about Dorothy 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. .