Comparison
sitrep vs Nimbalyst
Nimbalyst is a serious, well-built visual workspace for running Claude Code and Codex sessions - open source, actively developed, with an iOS companion. The job here is different, and the fastest way to pick is to notice which direction you face: Nimbalyst is where you work; sitrep is where you look.
Disclosure: this page is written by the maker of sitrep. Read the framing with that in mind - and note that where the honest answer is "use Nimbalyst", this page says so.
The one-sentence difference
Nimbalyst is a workspace you operate inside: it runs parallel agent sessions, shows you their diffs, and gives you visual editors for the documents around them. sitrep is an AI project status dashboard: a state layer on top of the markdown your AI agents already generate - it runs nothing, edits nothing, and works the same whichever tool produced the files.
The two answer different moments. Nimbalyst is for the hours you are actively driving agents. sitrep is for the moment before that: opening a cold project after days away and needing to know what moved, what is stalled, and what is waiting on you - across every project, not just the ones in a workspace.
Side by side
| sitrep | Nimbalyst | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | AI project status dashboard - a passive state layer over existing files | A visual workspace and session manager for AI coding agents (successor to Crystal) |
| How you use it | Glance at it - it reads what already happened, whatever tool ran the session | Work inside it - run sessions, review diffs, edit documents in its own editors |
| Parses organic agent markdown | Yes - status, phases, decisions and due dates from files nobody structured for a tool | No - it tracks its own sessions and tasks, with WYSIWYG markdown and diagram editors |
| Scope | Cross-project - one overview across every repo and workspace on disk | The workspaces and sessions you run inside it |
| Runs agents | Never - orchestration is on the anti-roadmap | Yes - parallel sessions with diff review are the core feature |
| Editing | Not an editor - three guarded state operations are the only writes | Visual editors are part of the product |
| Mobile | Planned: a read-only, end-to-end-encrypted mirror of parsed state | iOS companion app |
| License | Commercial desktop app, in development | Open source (MIT), free for individuals, with a team tier |
When to choose Nimbalyst
- You want to run several agent sessions in parallel and review their diffs in one place - active orchestration is the job.
- You like working in a visual environment: WYSIWYG markdown, diagrams, a session board.
- You want open source you can read and extend, free for individual use, from an active team.
- You want a companion app for keeping an eye on live sessions from an iPhone.
sitrep will never compete on any of that: running agents is on its anti-roadmap permanently. If orchestration is what you need, Nimbalyst is a good place to get it.
When to choose sitrep
- Your question is not "how do I run agents" but "where do my projects stand" - especially after time away.
- Your state lives in the documents agents leave behind - plans, decision logs, analyses - not in session history, and you want it parsed rather than re-read.
- You work across many repos and tools - some sessions in a terminal, some in an IDE, some on another machine - and want one overview that does not care where the work happened.
- You want a tool that never runs, edits or restructures anything - a glance, not a second cockpit.
Using both
There is no migration between these tools, because sitrep demands nothing: point it at the folders your Nimbalyst workspaces (and everything else) write into, and it starts parsing state from the markdown that is already there. Drive sessions in Nimbalyst; open sitrep when you come back cold. Neither tool has to know the other exists - which is the whole idea behindzero adoption cost.
sitrep is in development, launching first on macOS. Local-first - your files never leave your machine.