Orbital

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/5f1373bc-2c3e-440b-af52-77ecbd80c27f

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Why a project agent?

Is your context actually yours?

You're three rounds into a design discussion with Claude Code when it stops with "You're out of usage credits." Your Codex quota is sitting right there, but Codex knows nothing about this project: the goal, the two decisions you just made, the half-edited files. You'd have to explain all of it again.

It isn't only usage limits. People already use several capable agents at work: for the newest model, the leftover quota, or because a particular tool is better at the job. But the plan you settled with Claude Code, the file Codex left half-edited, the trade-off you decided in Cursor: each one is locked inside its own session. Close the session or switch tools, and that context is out of reach.

So you carry the project between them: restating goals, explaining previous decisions, locating artifacts, and checking what was left unfinished.

You are the agent's intern: copying and pasting, ferrying context, remembering where all the odd files live, while the agent gets the thinking.

Orbital takes the context out of the session and puts it back in your local folder, and changes the unit of work from the session to the project.

The project agent records every agent's progress on the project, so the next agent picks up the task with the full context. Whatever one agent produces or learns is kept for every other agent to draw on and reuse. No wheel gets reinvented: all your agents evolve together on the same project.

Individual agents complete tasks. Orbital moves the whole project forward.

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What it means to own the project

Orbital maintains five things that normally disappear or fragment between agent sessions — all of them as plain files in your project folder:

• State — what is true about the project now (PROJECT_STATE.md)
• Decisions — what was decided and why (DECISIONS.md)
• Lessons — what the project has learned (LESSONS.md)
• Work — what is running, completed, or blocked (queue.json). Every queued task ends Completed or Blocked — an agent that stops without a verdict gets re-prompted, then force-blocked with a reason. Nothing drifts away silently.
• Artifacts — what the agents researched, wrote, or built (the workspace itself, plus orbital/output/)

These stay in the local project and become context for future work. On a cold start, Orbital assembles them into its own system prompt before it acts.

When Orbital delegates, the worker is pointed at those same files and told they are authoritative — that briefing is rendered fresh on every dispatch, not something you paste in. Each worker also keeps its own memory file inside the project, so it accumulates its own experience across dispatches. When the task finishes, Orbital reads the result and records what matters back into the project.

The worker can change. The project continues.

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Quick Start

Want the step-by-step version with screenshots? See the Orbital user guide: API keys, projects, switching agents, the task queue, automations and project settings.

1. Launch Orbital — the setup wizard walks you through four steps: first confirm the coding agents Orbital found on this computer, then import the projects you already worked on with them (both can be skipped), then set the API key and connect your accounts.

   Step 3 — LLM Provider: In mainland China, tap Sign in with TokenDance, authorize, and start on free tokens. Otherwise pick a provider from the preset cards, follow the key-console link to grab an API key, and paste it in. Supports DeepSeek, Anthropic, OpenAI, Moonshot, and a dozen other providers.

   Step 4 — Connect Your Accounts: Link API connectors (Google Calendar, Drive) and sign in to sites your agents will need (Google, GitHub, etc.) so they can browse without getting blocked by CAPTCHAs. Everything here is optional and can be done later in Settings.

2. Create a project — give it a name, pick a workspace directory, set an autonomy level

3. Chat — type a task in the chat bar and the project agent handles it
4. Walk away — queue the next tasks; each finished one becomes context the next builds on

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See the project stay under one manager

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How Orbital compares

Memory, scheduling, and sub-agents are table stakes now — every tool below has them. These are the three questions where the answers still differ.

July 2026	Orbital	Claude Code	Codex	Hermes	OpenClaw
Can a different agent pick up the next task?	✅ Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, Cursor, any CLI	❌ Claude workers	❌ Codex workers	❌ Hermes workers	Partial (external harnesses via ACP)
What stops a queued task from drifting?	✅ Enforced Completed/Blocked closure	❌	❌	❌	❌
Who owns the budget, approvals, and audit trail?	✅ The project	Partial (permissions + run history)	Partial (approvals + enterprise audit)	Partial (command approvals)	Partial (approvals + logs)

The short version: the difference isn't any one capability — it's that the project, not the session, is the unit that owns state, workers, and governance.

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This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗