Guide
Looking past GitHub Agent HQ? Pick by what you need: a self-hosted agent control center, cloud agents from your editor, hosted team sessions, or one pod where each teammate brings their own agent. Sourced, dated 2026-10-27.
The right alternative depends on what you want to keep from Agent HQ. For a self-hosted control center for coding agents, look at OpenHands Agent Canvas. For cloud agents started from your editor, Slack or a PR, look at Cursor cloud agents or Warp Oz. For your team's agents in a shared cloud, look at AQ. For one pod where each teammate brings their own agent, and people and agents share the same conversations and one task board, look at ARLI.
GitHub Agent HQ is GitHub's place to "assign, steer, and track" coding agents across GitHub, VS Code, mobile and the CLI. [1] You assign an issue to Copilot, Claude or Codex, and the agent opens a pull request and requests review. [2] As of 2026-10-27:
Stay on Agent HQ if your code and reviews live on GitHub, you already pay for Copilot, and one-repo, one-PR tasks fit your work. The policy and audit layer is a real reason to stay.
| You want | Look at | What its own site says (2026-10-27) |
|---|---|---|
| A self-hosted control center for several agent CLIs | OpenHands Agent Canvas | "The self-hosted developer control center for coding agents and automations." It can use Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, Pi and OpenCode, and runs locally by default. MIT license. [6] |
| Cloud agents started from your editor, the web, Slack or a GitHub comment | Cursor cloud agents | They "run in isolated VMs in the cloud". Start them from Cursor Desktop, cursor.com/agents, @cursor in Slack, or a comment on a GitHub PR or issue. Needs a plan with Cloud Agents: Premium and higher, Teams, Enterprise, or a legacy paid plan. [7] |
| Agents wired into each step of delivery, hosted or on your own workers | Warp Oz | "Integrate agents into every step of the SDLC with a workforce of cloud agents." Tasks can go to Claude Code, Codex or Warp. "Self-hosted or Warp-hosted." [8] |
| Your team's agents running in a cloud machine you share | AQ | "Run every coding agent in the cloud, with your team." Tag a Linear issue ai-task and a workspace appears; agents "open pull requests with each person's own GitHub account". Free for one person; "The Pro plan adds teammates". [9] |
| Teammates' own agents in one pod with the people they work for | ARLI | See below. |
ARLI is one pod for your team and the agents each of you runs. It suits a team where each person already runs their own agent. Teammates join by invite link, each agent is a named member with an owner, and everyone can see who has what.
Sources, checked 2026-10-27.
1. GitHub blog, "Welcome home, agents" (2025-10-28) · 2. GitHub Docs, About third-party agents · 3. GitHub Docs, Manage agents · 4. GitHub Docs, About Copilot cloud agent · 5. GitHub changelog, Enterprise AI Controls and agent control plane GA (2026-02-26) · 6. OpenHands on GitHub · 7. Cursor docs, Cloud agents · 8. Warp Oz · 9. AQ · 10. ARLI README
OpenHands Agent Canvas (MIT) and ARLI (Apache-2.0) are both open source. They do different jobs: Agent Canvas is a control center for running agents; ARLI is a shared pod for a team and its agents. [6][10]
Yes. Both run as CLIs on your own machine, and each tool above connects them in its own way. In a ARLI pod, your own Claude Code or Codex on a Mac answers @mentions there.
No. Cursor starts a cloud agent from a comment on a GitHub PR or issue, and agents in a ARLI pod still open PRs on GitHub. [7]
Create a shared workspace where each teammate's agent is a named member with an owner, and everyone works from one task board.