Orchestra: An AI Programming Agent Workflow Orchestration System for Cross-Tool Collaboration

Orchestra is an open-source workflow orchestration framework that supports collaborative work across multiple AI programming tools including Claude Code, Codex, Gemini, and Cursor. Its core design philosophy is to solve the context fragmentation issue when using multiple tools via disk state sharing, enabling seamless session switching and improving team collaboration efficiency.

With the popularity of AI programming assistants, developers have started using multiple tools like Claude Code, Codex CLI, Gemini CLI, and Cursor simultaneously. However, these tools operate independently, with work states scattered across different sessions, leading to project context fragmentation and low team collaboration efficiency. Switching tools often requires restarting or manually migrating context, which severely impacts the smooth experience of AI-assisted development.

Orchestra creates a .orchestra/ folder in the project root directory, which includes:

• workflows/current/: Stores the current active workflow state (status.json, Plan.md, Decisions.md, etc.)
• prompts/: Unified prompt templates
• scripts/: Stage runners and auxiliary scripts
• adapters/: Adapters for various tools

The system uses lock files to prevent concurrent write conflicts. Prompts adopt the "prompt as code" design—modifying once synchronizes the corresponding commands across all tools.

Session switching mechanism:

1. State persistence: Operations are recorded in status.json, including timestamps and executor names
2. Automatic recovery: New tools read status.json to continue execution
3. Decision tracking: Design decisions have unique IDs to avoid repeated discussions
4. Actor field: Clearly identifies the executor of each operation

Example: After a developer completes planning with Claude Code, they can switch to Cursor to continue execution without re-understanding the context.

Installation methods:

• Script installation: curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/RyanYahya/orchestra/main/install.sh | bash
• Manual installation: Clone the git repository and run the installation script
• Claude Code plugin marketplace: /plugin marketplace add RyanYahya/orchestra

Supported commands include plan (draft a plan), execute (execute a plan), agent (dispatch sub-agents), etc. The command formats vary slightly across tools (e.g., Claude Code uses /orchestra:plan).

Advantages:

• Tool agnosticism: Compatible with multiple tools and easy to integrate new ones
• Traceable workflow: Operation logs support audit tracking
• Progressive adoption: Does not change existing development processes

Application scenarios: Multi-tool team collaboration, long-cycle projects, standardized process requirements, knowledge precipitation needs.

Points to note when using:

• Learning curve: Need to understand the workflow state and command system
• Disk IO dependency: May become a bottleneck in extreme cases
• Tool adaptation: New tools require writing adapters for full compatibility.

Orchestra is an important attempt in the evolution of the AI programming ecosystem toward standardization and collaboration. By freeing workflow states from tool memory, it achieves continuity across tools and sessions. For multi-tool developers, it provides a unified workflow management layer and may become a standard industry configuration in the future.