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The right tool, honestly.
Loom is not the answer to everything. Here is when Devin, Cursor, aider, OpenHands, or plain Claude Code is the better fit, and when a conducted fleet is.
How to read this page
Loom is free and Apache-2.0, so there is no seat quota to defend and no reason to oversell. If another tool fits your work better, use it. The short version: pick Loom when you want long-horizon, parallel work running on your own machine, with recovery and verification built in, and you would rather review diffs than babysit a chat. For everything else, read on.
The honest matrix
When something else wins.
When is Devin the better fit?
Devin is a hosted autonomous engineer. If you want a managed service that runs in someone else's cloud and you would rather not operate anything locally, it is a strong choice. Pick Loom when you want the work on your own machine, open source, with you paying providers directly. Read the full comparison.
When is Cursor the better fit?
Cursor is an AI IDE built around one tight editing loop, with you steering every change. For interactive, in-the-moment editing it is excellent, and many people run Cursor and Loom side by side: Cursor for the loop, Loom for the backlog. Read the full comparison.
When is aider the better fit?
aider is a single open-source CLI pair-programmer, and a very good one. If you want one focused session in your terminal and nothing more, aider is lighter than a fleet. Loom is for when you want six official Claude Code CLIs conducted in parallel, inside a full GUI workspace. Read the full comparison.
When is OpenHands the better fit?
OpenHands is an open agent platform that runs agents in containers. If you want a sandboxed, platform-style setup to build on, it is a solid pick. Loom is a native desktop app of about 13 MB built around the official Claude CLI, with no containers to manage. Read the full comparison.
When is plain Claude Code enough?
Often. The CLI is excellent on its own, and if one terminal keeps up with your ambitions you need nothing else. Loom is what you add when one terminal stops being enough: planning, dispatch, recovery, and verification across six of the same CLI you already trust. Read the full comparison.
And when Loom wins
Where a conducted fleet earns its place.
Parallel by design
Six real Claude Code sessions, a Conductor that plans goals into a mission DAG, and live activity strips showing what every session is doing.
Local and yours
Free, Apache-2.0, no telemetry, no account beyond your Claude login. Keys stay in the OS keychain and you pay your model providers directly.
Verified, not vibes
Auto-accept, stall recovery, and pooled-account rotation keep missions moving, and work is re-checked before it counts as done.
Hand it the work.
Walk away.
macOS, Linux, and Windows. Around 13 MB. Free and open source.