If you've used Claude Code or a similar AI coding assistant, you know the routine: it lives in a terminal tab, and once it starts editing files, browsing the web, or running tests, it's genuinely hard to tell what it's actually doing. Two new free Mac apps try to fix that in different ways. One gives a single agent a real home — its own window, a real browser, even a live phone view. The other gives you a control room for running several agents at once without losing track of which one is doing what. Here's how they actually differ.
Superagent: one agent, full visibility
Superagent gives Claude Code its own desktop app window instead of a terminal tab, with a real browser it controls using your own logged-in sessions, and — this is the standout feature — a live iOS Simulator so you can literally watch the agent test a mobile app as it builds it. Each task gets a persistent chat that survives restarts and its own Git worktree, so parallel tasks don't collide, plus a companion iPhone app that lets you approve or redirect the agent remotely over an end-to-end encrypted connection when you're away from your desk. It's free, open source under the MIT license, runs entirely locally, and needs nothing beyond an existing Claude Code subscription. The honest limits: it's an early project with a small user base so far, it only works with Claude Code specifically, and it's Mac Apple Silicon only.
Tessera: a control room for several agents at once
Tessera solves a different problem — the mess of terminal tabs that piles up once you're running more than one AI coding agent in parallel, one fixing a bug, another writing tests, a third exploring a refactor. It organizes all of that into a single workspace: each agent session gets its own isolated Git worktree so sessions can't interfere with each other, plus a visual Kanban board (Chat, Todo, Doing, Review, Done) that shows what's actually being worked on at a glance. Its "Chat View" turns a raw terminal session into a readable conversation thread, and it adds in-app file editing, diff review, git commits, PR creation, and mobile pairing to check in from a phone. Unlike Superagent, it isn't tied to one agent — it supports Claude Code, Codex, and OpenCode. It's free and open source too, but under the AGPL-3.0 license (worth checking before any commercial reuse), it's still a young project, and it needs Node.js 20+ installed to run.
| Superagent | Tessera | |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | One agent, deep visibility (browser + mobile simulator) | Several agents at once, organized on a board |
| Supported agents | Claude Code only | Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode |
| Standout feature | Live iOS Simulator + remote iPhone approval | Kanban board (Chat/Todo/Doing/Review/Done) across sessions |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Requirements | Mac Apple Silicon, existing Claude Code subscription | Mac Apple Silicon, Node.js 20+ |
| Price | Free | Free |
Pick Superagent if you mainly run one Claude Code task at a time and want to actually watch it work — especially if you're building anything mobile, since the live iOS Simulator view is hard to get anywhere else for free. Pick Tessera if your real problem is juggling three or four agent sessions across different tools and you keep losing track of which one is stuck waiting for review — the Kanban board and multi-agent support (including non-Claude agents) are built specifically for that. Both are free, open source, and young enough that it's worth just trying whichever matches today's problem rather than committing hard to one.