Pipelines with roles & gates
Direct assembles a pipeline — a role, model, substrate and reasoning effort per stage — with human checkpoint gates and review loops you control.
Crystal ran parallel sessions. Now what?
Crystal let you run multiple Claude Code (and Codex) sessions in parallel git worktrees, to test and compare approaches in one desktop app. It was deprecated in early 2026, with users pointed to a separate commercial successor. If you want a maintained home for that same worktree-parallel workflow — with more direction on top — here's how Octopush maps to what you had. Details below are as of their public docs.
— The mental model
Your parallel-session concepts, translated.
The worktree-isolation model Crystal pioneered is exactly how Octopush works — you keep the workflow and gain roles, cost visibility and gates.
| Crystal concept | In Octopush |
|---|---|
| A session in its own worktree | A workspace — a real git worktree, isolated |
| Many sessions in parallel | Parallel & background Direct runs across workspaces (Pro) |
| Compare approaches side by side | Mission Control (⌘⇧M) — every run, one cockpit |
| Session diffs & output | Review mode — per-hunk verdicts with "Why?" provenance |
| Run notes & attempts | The per-mission Logbook — worked time, spend, savings |
— What's different
Parallel sessions, plus direction.
Crystal ran sessions side by side. Octopush lets you turn that into a directed crew — with roles, gates, routing and a ledger — while keeping the worktree isolation you relied on.
Savings ledger
Every run leads with dollars saved against an all-premium baseline — the cost number Crystal never showed you.
Seatbelt sandbox
Agents run write-confined under the macOS seatbelt sandbox — free, never paywalled.
Routines & detached runs
Schedule crews (Days × Times, optional shell fire-condition); detached runs survive quitting the app, then notify you.
Mission Control
One cockpit (⌘⇧M) for every run across every workspace — status, spend and savings at a glance.
BYOK, any provider
Anthropic, OpenAI, DeepSeek and local Ollama — two wire protocols and custom base URLs. Local-first, zero telemetry, actively maintained.
— Honest deltas
The trade-offs, plainly.
Octopush is macOS-only. It's a closed product with a pricing model, not open source: a real free tier — Talk / Run / Review unlimited, BYOK, free sandboxing, and 25 Direct pipeline runs a month, one at a time — with Pro at $20/mo for unlimited, parallel, background and detached runs plus cross-machine history sync. If all you need is worktree-isolated parallel sessions, Claude Code's own built-in worktree support may now cover it. Octopush earns its place when you want those sessions directed into pipelines with roles, gates and a cost ledger.
Keep the workflow.
Gain the direction.
A native macOS app — Apple Silicon & Intel, signed updates. Bring your own keys: Claude, OpenAI, DeepSeek, or a local model with Ollama. Free to start.