Conductor
Conductor is an AI-native development startup and career inbound lead from People Network Ledger. It is relevant because its product thesis overlaps Kevin's multi-agent coding and Agent Machines orchestration interests.
Startup at conductor.build - recruiting Kevin for an engineering role (LinkedIn inbound Jun 2026). The public careers page describes Conductor as a San Francisco company building the future of AI-native software development: a Mac app for running a team of coding agents, positioned around the emerging "AI orchestrator" category. Source: Conductor Join Us page, 2026-06-18
Public positioning
Conductor's current public story:
| Dimension | Detail |
|---|---|
| Product | Run parallel Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and OpenCode agents in isolated workspaces on a Mac |
| Category | AI orchestrator / primary UI for AI managers |
| Location | San Francisco, in-person about five days a week |
| Team page roles | Charlie Holtz, CEO; Jackson de Campos, CTO; Sam Lehman, Ops |
| Public traction claim | 10x growth since January; $24M raised; used by engineers at companies including Linear, Vercel, Ramp, Notion, and Stripe |
| Current product docs | Each task gets its own workspace, branch, files, terminal, diff, and review path |
| Current release signal | 0.70.0 on June 26, 2026 added multiple run scripts and repo script configuration |
Source: Conductor Join Us page, 2026-06-18; https://www.conductor.build/; https://www.conductor.build/docs; https://www.conductor.build/changelog, 2026-06-27
Product stack and setup surface
Conductor's stack, as exposed through public docs, is a Mac desktop orchestrator around local git worktrees. The core unit is a workspace: a branch plus a worktree plus agent chat, terminal, run environment, diff, checks, and PR/review state. It treats repo setup as product surface: .conductor/settings.toml and .conductor/settings.local.toml define setup/run/archive scripts, environment variables, files to copy, prompt customizations, and git behavior. Source: Conductor docs and official agent skill, 2026-06-27
The harness surface currently covers Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and OpenCode. Claude Code, Codex, and OpenCode are bundled or managed by Conductor; Cursor runs through the Cursor API and needs CURSOR_API_KEY. Conductor does not resell model usage: provider accounts, subscriptions, and API keys determine billing and available models. Source: https://www.conductor.build/llms-full.txt, 2026-06-27
Important implementation implications:
- worktree compatibility is a first-class product constraint
- repo setup is mostly TOML, scripts, env, copied gitignored files, and port allocation
CONDUCTOR_PORTgives each workspace a 10-port range- shared settings only apply after landing on the default remote branch
- local-only settings belong in
.conductor/settings.local.toml - MCP setup is per harness: Claude Code, Codex, and Cursor Composer each have their own config path
Why it matters to Kevin
Conductor is not only a recruiting lead. It is a neighboring product thesis. Conductor focuses on the human UI for managing parallel coding agents on a local Mac; Agent Machines focuses on persistent remote workers, substrate/runtime routing, and browser/CLI operation. The overlap is useful for comparison:
- both assume agents become teams, not single chat threads
- both care about orchestration as the operator surface
- both have to make agent state, parallelism, and handoff visible
- both need strong taste because the interface becomes the engineer's cockpit
Kevin has a 20-minute intro call scheduled with People Network Ledger on Fri Jun 26, 2026, 2:00-2:20 PM PT (Google Meet). Career signal, not Agent Machines fundraising. Source: Gmail sync, 2026-06-06; User, 2026-06-12
Programming interview
See Conductor Programming Interview Prep for the focused prep page. The programming round is about a 40-minute open-ended CLI script problem where normal tools, IDEs, and AI agents are explicitly allowed. The strongest signal is technical ownership under agent acceleration: Kevin should restate the invariant, inspect SQLite before designing around imagined tables, use Codex for scoped scaffolding/review, and keep the interviewer in the loop while shipping a working vertical slice. Source: User-pasted interview instructions, 2026-06-27
Timeline
-
2026-07-01 | Project graph refresh checked this page against Kevin's live GitHub inventory and PortfolioMon scrape. No direct repo/card match was promoted here, so the page remains a context or umbrella project page. Source: raw/github/kevin-repos-2026-07-01.json; raw/sites/kevinliu-biz-2026-07-01/portfolio-projects.json
-
2026-06-27 | Installed Conductor locally and captured the current docs/agent-skill setup model: Conductor is the local Mac workspace layer around Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and OpenCode; repo setup centers on TOML settings, run/setup scripts, copied gitignored files, MCP, and provider auth. Source: https://www.conductor.build/llms-full.txt; https://www.conductor.build/.well-known/agent-skills/conductor/SKILL.md
-
2026-06-27 | Added programming-interview prep and refreshed current public product positioning: Conductor publicly supports Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and OpenCode agents; docs emphasize isolated workspaces, branches, terminals, diffs, and review paths; changelog latest is
0.70.0from June 26, 2026 for multiple run scripts. Source: https://www.conductor.build/; https://www.conductor.build/docs; https://www.conductor.build/changelog; User-pasted interview instructions, 2026-06-27 -
2026-06-18 | Enriched from Conductor public careers page: added product/category positioning, team roles, traction claims, and comparison to Agent Machines orchestration. Source: https://www.conductor.build/join-us, 2026-06-18
-
2026-06-12 | Intro call scheduled Fri Jun 26 2:00 PM PT. Source: User, 2026-06-12