Short answer: move when you need the same worktree workflow beyond macOS, on a phone, or under a spend cap, and when a second 50 dollar subscription on top of your model bill is hard to justify. Stay on Conductor when its dense Mac board is the point, when cloud sandboxes on someone else's infrastructure are exactly what you want, or when you have already bought Enterprise for SAML and SCIM. The migration itself is short because both products key on git worktrees: your branches, setup scripts, and repository instruction files are the state, and none of it lives inside either app.
- Nothing important lives inside Conductor. Branches, worktrees, setup scripts, and agent instruction files are all on disk or in git.
- Your model subscriptions carry over unchanged. Both tools run the same agent CLIs on the same accounts.
- The app cost goes to zero; Continuum charges for optional hosted inference, not for the workbench.
- You gain platforms and a phone. Mac, iPhone, Watch, web, Windows, and Linux, with real approval and interrupt control from mobile.
- You lose Conductor Cloud's remote sandboxes. Continuum keeps the process on hosts you own, which is a different trade, not a strictly better one.
- Run both for a week. Nothing prevents it, and the rollback is uninstalling one app.
First decide whether you should switch
The two products overlap more than most pairs in this category, which means the decision turns on a small number of specific differences rather than on general quality. Work through them before touching anything.
| Criterion | Move toward Continuum | Stay on Conductor |
|---|---|---|
| Platforms in your team | Mac, Windows, Linux, iPhone, Watch, web | Everyone is on macOS |
| Workbench price | Free app | Pro at $50/mo is already budgeted |
| Agent coverage | Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini, Grok, OpenCode | Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, OpenCode are enough |
| Where work runs | Your Mac plus enrolled Linux or Windows hosts | Vendor-managed cloud sandboxes |
| Mobile control | Shipping native iPhone and Watch clients | iOS app is still in private beta |
| Quota visibility | Live 5-hour and weekly gauges per account | Check the provider console |
| Spend controls | Weekly caps and spend by repository | No metering, so no caps |
| Hosted inference | Optional, from $25/mo | Bring your own on every tier |
| Enterprise identity | Organization roles and admin dashboard | SAML SSO and SCIM on Enterprise |
| Board density | Broad workbench across devices | A dense Mac-native board |
Honest reasons to leave Conductor
- Someone on the team is not on a Mac. This is the most common reason and it has no workaround. Conductor has no Windows or Linux build, only a waitlist with no date.
- The app subscription is additive. Conductor resells no inference, so 50 dollars a month sits entirely on top of Claude, ChatGPT, or Cursor. The Continuum app is free, and its paid tiers replace provider inference rather than adding a layer.
- You want to steer agents from a phone. Continuum ships native iPhone and Watch clients today for approving plans, interrupting runs, reading diffs, and following sessions. Conductor's mobile app is in private beta.
- You cannot see your quota. Running six agents in parallel burns a weekly Claude allowance six times as fast. Continuum shows live 5-hour and weekly gauges per account, including several subscriptions side by side with isolation between them.
- You need a spend cap that holds. Conductor meters nothing, so it can cap nothing. If a per-member weekly budget is a requirement, it has to live in something that sits in the billing path.
- You want more agents in one place. Continuum adds Gemini CLI and Grok to the four Conductor supports, and keeps each agent identity distinct in one sidebar.
- You want spend attributed by repository. Continuum parses local agent history and prices it into a ledger by repository, provider, model, and day.
- Cloud chat storage is a problem for you. Conductor stores chat messages from cloud workspaces on its servers. Continuum keeps the agent on a host you own.
Honest reasons to stay on Conductor
- Conductor Cloud is genuinely useful and Continuum does not replicate it. A published 8 vCPU, 16 GB sandbox that runs your workspace after the laptop closes is a real product, and moving execution to a host you own is a different answer with different operational work attached.
- The Mac board is denser. Conductor does one thing and its interface is shaped entirely around it. A workbench that also has to be an iPhone app makes different layout choices.
- SAML SSO and SCIM are shipped on Enterprise. If your identity provider integration is already approved and working, that is not a thing to trade away casually.
- Multiplayer is mature and specific. Live presence, follow mode, and reassigning a workspace to a teammate are collaboration features built for this exact workflow.
- Stacked pull requests on GitHub. Conductor shipped stacks support in August 2026, which matters if your team works in dependent branch chains.
- You are happy and it works. The best reason to stay. A migration that trades a working setup for a marginally cheaper one is a poor use of a week.
What actually has to move
Less than people expect. Both products treat a git worktree as the unit of work, so the durable state is in git and on disk rather than in either application's database. Take an inventory before you install anything.
List your active workspaces and their branches
Conductor keeps worktrees under a per-repository directory in your home folder, one per workspace, named after a city. Every one of those is an ordinary git worktree with an ordinary branch. Push anything unmerged before you change tools. This is the only step where you can actually lose work, and only by deleting a directory carelessly.
Capture your file-copy patterns
Gitignored files do not travel into a worktree automatically, so you almost certainly configured a list of files to copy: environment files, certificates, local settings. Write that list down. It is the single most common reason a freshly created worktree cannot build, in either tool.
Capture your setup script
Whatever runs on workspace creation to install dependencies or prepare the environment is a shell script and it moves as one. If it currently lives only in Conductor's settings, commit it to the repository instead. That is worth doing regardless of which tool you end up using.
Confirm your agent instruction files are in git
CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md, skills, and slash commands belong to the repository and to the agent CLI, not to the orchestrator. They keep working unchanged because the same agent binaries read them. If any of that context lives in your head or in a scratch file, commit it now.
Note which subscriptions each project uses
Conductor uses whatever credential is already on the machine. If you run a personal Claude account for side projects and a work account for the day job, write down which is which. Continuum can hold both at once with isolation between them, but only if you set them up deliberately.
Run both, then cut over
Nothing prevents both applications from being installed at once. They read the same repositories, use the same agent CLIs, and authenticate against the same accounts. That makes a parallel pilot the obvious approach and the rollback trivial.
- Install Continuum and connect one provider. Start with whichever agent you use most. The app is free and there is no trial clock, so there is no pressure to evaluate quickly.
- Reproduce one project's setup. Point it at one repository, recreate your file-copy list and setup script, and start a single worktree session. Confirm it builds and the tests run.
- Run a real task in parallel. Give both tools the same kind of work for a few days. Do not compare on a toy task; the differences show up under three or more concurrent sessions.
- Test the parts you moved for. If mobile control was the reason, actually approve a plan from your phone mid-task. If quota visibility was the reason, watch the gauges through a heavy day. Do not migrate on a feature list.
- Add the rest of your repositories. Only once the first project has been through a full cycle: branch, review, pull request, merge.
- Keep Conductor installed for a fortnight. A migration is finished when the new path has completed a full release cycle, not when the new app opens.
Teams have one extra step. Before rolling out beyond a pilot, decide how model access and budgets are governed, since this is where the two products differ structurally rather than cosmetically. Continuum can hold organization roles, seat billing, weekly spend caps per member, and a spend ledger by repository; see organization controls and model the caps first with the spend cap simulator. Conductor has an admin portal and centralized billing on Teams, but no caps to configure, because it meters no usage.
Questions people ask
Will I lose my branches if I switch?
No. Conductor workspaces are ordinary git worktrees with ordinary branches, stored in your home directory. Push anything unmerged first, as you would before any tooling change, and every branch survives regardless of which application you open next.
Do I need new subscriptions?
No. Both tools run the same agent CLIs against the same accounts, so your Claude, ChatGPT, or Cursor subscriptions carry over untouched. The Continuum app itself is free, so the 50 dollar Conductor Pro line item simply goes away if you were paying it.
What is the one thing I actually give up?
Conductor Cloud. Vendor-managed remote sandboxes that keep a workspace running after you close the laptop are the substantive content of the paid tier, and Continuum answers that requirement differently, by keeping the agent on a host you own and letting you control the session from a phone or the web.
Can I run both at the same time?
Yes, and you should during the pilot. They read the same repositories and use the same agent binaries and credentials. Avoid pointing both at the same worktree simultaneously, for the same reason you would not run two agents in one checkout.
Does my CLAUDE.md still work?
Yes. Repository instruction files, skills, and slash commands belong to the agent CLI and to the repository, not to the orchestrator. The same Claude Code or Codex binary reads them either way, so nothing about your prompt engineering changes.
Is this a reversible decision?
Almost entirely. Because neither product owns your branches, your setup scripts, or your instruction files, reverting means opening the other application again. The only thing that does not come back is chat history, which is scoped to whichever app produced it.
Sources
Every figure above was read from these pages on August 2026. Vendors reprice without notice; if you find a stale number, tell us.