Orbit / Is Orbit open source?
Is Orbit open source?
No. Orbit is closed source. The short version of why, and what you can check for yourself instead.
What is actually public
The public repository at github.com/rajveer2450/orbit holds release binaries and the website. It does not hold the application source. There is no repository to browse, no license to read, and no build you can reproduce yourself. If a page elsewhere describes Orbit as open source or source-available, that page is wrong.
Why
Orbit is built by one person. The free tier is the entire local product with no feature gate and no account, and it is paid for by Pro subscriptions. Publishing the source would make a rebranded free copy a weekend's work, and there would be nothing left to fund the thing. That is a commercial decision, not a technical one, and reasonable people land on the other side of it.
If that is where you land, the last section of this page has better options for you than arguing about it.
What you can verify without the source
Closed source is not the same as opaque. Most of what people actually want to know about a tool like this is observable from outside:
| Question | How to check it yourself |
|---|---|
| Does it send my code anywhere? | Watch the network. Agents call their providers directly with your keys. Orbit proxies nothing and adds no markup, so the only outbound traffic from a signed-out install is update checks. |
| What does it store about me? | One SQLite file at ~/.orbit/orbit.sqlite. Open it in any SQLite client and read every table. Nothing is encrypted or obfuscated. |
| What does it do to my repository? | git worktree list shows exactly what it created. Worktrees live under ~/.orbit/worktrees/. Your working checkout is never checked out, reset or stashed by Orbit, including during merges. |
| What runs on my machine? | The agent CLIs you already installed, launched as normal child processes in a PTY. ps shows them. Orbit does not bundle or modify them. |
| How do I remove it completely? | Delete the app and delete ~/.orbit. There is no other state, no daemon left behind, no login item. |
The optional cloud, which only exists if you sign in for Pro, syncs orchestration metadata: project names, workspace status, task text. Diffs, file contents and terminal output are not part of that sync.
The unsigned-binary problem is separate, and it is real
Right now the builds are not code-signed on either platform, so macOS Gatekeeper and Windows SmartScreen both warn you. That is a genuine trust gap and it is worse than the closed-source question, because it means you cannot easily confirm the binary you downloaded is the one that was built. Signing is on the list. The install pages for macOS and Windows say exactly what you will see and why.
If closed source is a dealbreaker, use one of these
Several open-source projects solve overlapping problems, and if the license matters more to you than the feature set, they are the right answer. Check each project's current activity before committing to it, since this space moves fast.
- Claude Squad runs multiple Claude Code sessions in tmux panes, terminal-only and keyboard-driven. The closest thing to Orbit's model without a GUI.
- Vibe Kanban puts agent tasks on a kanban board in the browser, Apache-2.0.
- emdash is an Electron desktop app for running many agent CLIs in worktrees, and is architecturally the nearest open-source neighbour to Orbit.
- opcode and similar projects give Claude Code a desktop GUI, including on Windows.
- Crystal was one of the first GUIs for parallel Claude Code sessions and is worth reading even if you do not run it.
- git worktree by itself, with a few shell aliases, genuinely covers the first three or four parallel agents. Plenty of people never need more than that.
Orbit's argument against all of the above is not openness. It is what happens after an agent stops: your own lint, typecheck and test commands decide whether work is ready, blocked agents surface with the question attached instead of sitting silent in a pane, and merges run through one lane so they cannot race. If those do not matter to you, take the open-source option.
Will it ever be opened?
There is no plan and no date, so treat the answer as no. Making promises about a future license to close a sale today would be the kind of thing this page exists to avoid.
Still want to try it?
Free for individuals, no account, your keys, your machine.
Builds are unsigned. Both install pages explain the first-launch step.