Maestro for Windows

Why Windows developers use Maestro

Most apps for running coding agents in parallel are Mac-only, including Conductor, whose site says it runs agents "on your Mac" (as of October 2026). Maestro does the same job natively on Windows and adds a few things on top:

• No workspace cap. Run as many parallel agents as your machine can handle. There is no limit on open workspaces.
• Every major agent CLI. Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, OpenCode, Kimi Code, and Grok Build, or a plain shell workspace. You pick the agent per workspace.
• True isolation. Each workspace is its own git worktree on its own branch, so agents never trample each other's changes. See how parallel Claude Code works with git worktrees.
• Review without leaving. Read the diff, edit files in the built-in editor (including Jupyter notebooks), preview web apps in the integrated browser, and open a PR from the app.
• A memory guard. On Windows, one runaway test can exhaust the commit limit and crash every app. If a process an agent turn started is about to run the machine out of memory, Maestro stops that one process and tells you why. It's on by default (Settings → Memory guard).
• Local folders and SSH remotes. Work in plain folders, or on Linux and macOS machines over SSH, including hosts behind ProxyCommand / ProxyJump.

Install on Windows

Native Windows or WSL?

Maestro runs agents natively on Windows. It doesn't call into WSL: it starts the Windows build of each CLI it finds on your Windows PATH (claude.exe, codex, cursor-agent, and so on). A CLI you installed only inside a WSL distribution won't show up in Maestro.

Running natively takes some care, and Maestro handles it:

• npm shims are unwrapped. CLIs installed with npm are .cmd batch files on Windows. Spawning those through cmd.exe mangles prompts that contain quotes, &, or newlines. Maestro reads the shim and launches the real binary (or Node plus the script) directly, so your prompt reaches the agent exactly as you typed it.
• Stop really stops. Agent CLIs start helper processes of their own. When you stop a turn, Maestro ends the whole process tree with taskkill /T /F, not just the top process.
• Real terminals. Each workspace's terminal is a ConPTY session running Windows PowerShell (powershell.exe). To use another shell, such as PowerShell 7, set the MAESTRO_SHELL environment variable (for example to pwsh.exe) before you start Maestro.

Native Windows is now a supported path for the main agent CLIs, but vendors differ on what they recommend (as of October 2026):

Setting up Claude Code itself first? Run Claude Code on Windows without WSL covers the native install, Git Bash versus PowerShell, and the common errors.

If your code has to live in Linux, Maestro's way to work there is an SSH remote: add a Linux machine, VM, or cloud box as a project, and the agent runs on that host. Maestro checks the host with uname, so the remote has to be Linux or macOS, not a Windows SSH server. In principle you could run an SSH server inside WSL 2 and add it as a remote, but we haven't tested that, so treat it as unsupported. A remote also keeps working after you close your laptop; see how to keep Claude Code running.

Install the agent CLIs on Windows

Run these in PowerShell. They are the vendors' own commands as of October 2026 (sources at the end of this page):

# Claude Code (Anthropic's native installer)
irm https://claude.ai/install.ps1 | iex

# Codex (OpenAI)
powershell -ExecutionPolicy ByPass -c "irm https://chatgpt.com/codex/install.ps1 | iex"

# Cursor agent CLI
irm 'https://cursor.com/install?win32=true' | iex

# OpenCode
npm install -g opencode-ai

You can also install from inside Maestro. When a CLI isn't detected, Settings → Harnesses shows an Install button that runs the install command in a terminal inside the app. For Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, and Kimi Code that's an npm install -g, so you need Node.js on your PATH (Anthropic asks for Node.js 22 or later for its npm package). For Grok Build it's xAI's PowerShell installer. Cursor's in-app installer is a curl … | bash script that won't run in PowerShell, so on Windows use the irm command above instead.

Then sign in: run the CLI once in a terminal, or use the Sign in button in Settings → Harnesses, which runs the CLI's own login (such as claude auth login) inside the app. Each CLI keeps its own credentials, and your Claude or ChatGPT plan pays for usage as it does in the terminal. You can also save an API key in Settings, and Maestro passes it to the CLI as ANTHROPIC_API_KEY, OPENAI_API_KEY, and so on. More on each agent: Claude Code GUI, Codex GUI.

Git, GitHub, and your tools

• Git is required for worktrees. Install Git for Windows with its default "Git from the command line and also from 3rd-party software" PATH option, so Maestro can find git. Without git you can still open plain folders, but you don't get per-workspace branches. Claude Code also uses the Git Bash that comes with it for its Bash tool.
• The GitHub CLI downloads itself if needed. Maestro's GitHub features use gh. If you sign in to GitHub from Maestro and gh isn't on your PATH, Maestro downloads GitHub's official Windows build into %USERPROFILE%\maestro\tools.
• Setup and run scripts run in PowerShell. On Windows, a repo's setup and run scripts run through powershell.exe -NoProfile -Command, so a bash script won't work there. PowerShell doesn't stop on a failed native command the way set -e does, so guard each step yourself, for example npm ci; if ($LASTEXITCODE) { throw }.
• "Open in" uses your editors' CLIs. Maestro lists an editor (VS Code, Cursor, Zed, Windsurf, JetBrains IDEs, and others) when its command-line launcher, such as code or cursor, is on your PATH. "Open in terminal" opens Windows Terminal, or a PowerShell window if Windows Terminal isn't installed.
• Where things live. Worktrees go under %USERPROFILE%\maestro\workspaces\<project>. Settings and Maestro's database live in %APPDATA%\Maestro.

Updates and uninstalling

Maestro checks for updates at launch, every two minutes while it runs, and when you come back to the window or wake the PC. It downloads updates in the background and then shows a Restart to update button. If you just quit, the update installs on quit. Settings also has a Check for updates button.

To uninstall, go to Windows Settings → Apps → Installed apps → Maestro → Uninstall. The uninstaller leaves your data in place, so delete it yourself if you want it gone. Check the worktrees for uncommitted work first:

Remove-Item -Recurse -Force "$env:APPDATA\Maestro"
Remove-Item -Recurse -Force "$env:USERPROFILE\maestro"
# then, in each repo you used with Maestro:
git worktree prune

Troubleshooting

An agent shows "Not installed" but works in my terminal

Maestro uses the PATH Windows gave it at launch, and it caches what it detected for a few minutes. If you installed the CLI after starting Maestro, quit Maestro completely and open it again. If it's still missing, run where.exe claude (or codex, cursor-agent, opencode) in a new PowerShell window. If that finds nothing, the installer didn't add itself to your user PATH; add the folder it installed to and restart Maestro. Claude Code's native installer puts claude.exe in %USERPROFILE%\.local\bin.

The Cursor install button fails

The in-app installer runs Cursor's bash script, which won't run in PowerShell. Use irm 'https://cursor.com/install?win32=true' | iex, then restart Maestro. Maestro looks for the cursor-agent command, which Cursor's installer still creates next to the newer agent alias.

My setup script fails on Windows but works on my Mac

It's probably a bash script. On Windows it runs in PowerShell, so write a PowerShell version, or keep the shared logic in a Node or Python script that both versions call.

Maestro feels sluggish on an older PC

The glass and blur effects are drawn by your graphics card. Settings → Visual effects → Reduced swaps them for solid surfaces. Auto already picks Reduced on devices it recognizes as low-end.

Known limitations on Windows

Being honest about the rough edges, as of October 2026:

• The installer isn't code-signed, hence the SmartScreen notice.
• Only an x64 build is published. There's no native ARM64 build.
• Voice dictation is macOS-only.
• The Preview tab's list of web servers already running on this machine is empty on Windows, because it relies on lsof. Previewing a workspace's own dev server still works.
• On macOS (APFS) and on Linux btrfs or XFS, a new worktree can reuse a sibling's node_modules as a copy-on-write clone when the lockfiles match. Windows has no clone Maestro relies on, so dependencies install normally through your setup script or the agent.

Sources (checked October 2026)

• code.claude.com/docs/en/setup: Claude Code system requirements, Windows install commands, native Windows vs WSL, Git for Windows, npm package
• github.com/openai/codex: Codex CLI install commands for Windows, macOS, and Linux
• developers.openai.com/codex/windows: Codex on Windows, native sandbox, when to use WSL
• cursor.com/docs/cli/installation: Cursor agent CLI install on Windows and WSL
• opencode.ai/docs: OpenCode install options and Windows guidance
• git-scm.com/downloads/win: Git for Windows
• conductor.build: Conductor platform

Maestro is an independent project, not affiliated with Conductor / Melty Labs, Anthropic, OpenAI, or Cursor. Vendor details come from their public docs as of October 12, 2026; agent CLIs change quickly, so check the linked pages if a command fails.