I got tired of AI coding agents stepping on each other, so I built Switchman

We’re at a weird point in software development.

AI coding agents are finally useful enough that you actually want more than one of them running at the same time.

One agent updates auth.
Another writes tests.
Another fixes docs.
Another tries a refactor.

In theory, that sounds amazing.

In practice, it gets messy fast.

They duplicate work.
They edit the same files.
They leave stale half-finished branches behind.
And the “easy” part of parallel AI coding turns into manual coordination and merge cleanup.

That was the reason I built Switchman.

What Switchman is

Switchman acts like a project manager for your AI coding assistants.

It:

• hands out tasks
• stops agents from editing the same file at the same time
• tracks active work
• recovers stuck sessions
• checks work before merge
• lands finished branches safely back onto main

The simplest way to describe it is this:

Git gives you branches. Switchman gives you coordination.

The problem I kept hitting

Running one coding agent is easy.

Running several on one repo is where the real problems start.

Git worktrees help with isolation, but not coordination.

They do not tell you:

• which task each agent should take next
• who already owns a file
• whether an abandoned session should be cleaned up
• whether a finished branch is still safe to land
• how to merge several completed branches back onto main without babysitting the whole process

That missing layer is what I wanted.

Not another coding agent.

A control layer for the agents I already use.

What using it feels like

The workflow I wanted was:

1. spin up several agent workspaces
2. give them clearly separate tasks
3. keep one status view open
4. stop collisions early
5. land finished work safely, one branch at a time

That’s what Switchman does now.

A typical first run looks like this:

bash
switchman setup --agents 5
switchman verify-setup

switchman task add "Implement auth helper" --priority 9
switchman task add "Add auth tests" --priority 8
switchman task add "Update auth docs" --priority 7

switchman status --watch
switchman gate ci