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Forkbench vs crystl
crystl is a multitasking terminal for AI coding agents, with parallel worktrees, agent orchestration, action panels, token tracking and an iPhone companion.
crystl and Forkbench are aimed at the same person: someone running several coding agents who has outgrown a plain terminal. Both give agents parallel worktrees, both track what the agents are doing, and both have a phone companion. They differ on what they think the hard part is. crystl leans toward orchestration and visibility, including token tracking and action panels. Forkbench leans toward the boundaries: what an agent may read, what counts as finished, and what is still true tomorrow.
| Forkbench | crystl | |
|---|---|---|
| Real login shell | Yes, a generic PTY per tab | Yes |
| Parallel worktrees | One click, developer-directed | Yes |
| Secrets handling | Vault (Pro), sealed on your Mac | No secrets handling |
| Vendor lock on a task | None, any agent claims any task | Per-agent surfaces |
| Who decides a task is done | A human accepts it | Agent-reported |
| Notes for agents | Notebooks, end-to-end encrypted, granted per Thread | Project context |
| Phone access | Talk, web and phone (Pro) | iPhone app |
| Platform | macOS 13+ | macOS |
| Price | Free; Pro €30/mo; Team $30/seat, dropping to $20 at scale | See their pricing |
| Credentials an agent can use but never read | Vault (Pro) holds it, and it goes to the one command that needs it, so it never reaches the prompt, the command line or the transcript. A seatbelt, not a guarantee: an agent you authorise for a command could still print what it was handed. | Not a terminal feature. A key in your shell or in a .env is readable by anything you run, agents included. |
Where crystl is strong
- Purpose-built for the same job, with parallel worktrees and agent orchestration.
- An iPhone app and per-agent landing pages for the major CLI agents.
- Token tracking and action panels give a live read on cost and state.
Where Forkbench differs
- Agents run commands with your API keys without the value entering the prompt, the command line or the transcript. Vault is part of Pro.
- Folders the macOS kernel enforces. A Thread can be locked to the folders the job is about, applied as each shell starts and inherited by every process it spawns, so an agent cannot read or write outside them. Builds still run and the network is untouched.
- Secrets follow the Thread, not the folder, so an agent that spins up a worktree can still use them. Nothing to copy into the new directory and nothing to forget.
- No vendor recorded on a task, so work Claude Code planned is claimable by a Codex pane without re-explaining it.
- A disagreement between two agents becomes a discussion on the task, and the task can't be marked finished while it's still open. What got settled is written down before the work closes.
- A human acceptance step. An agent reports a task finished, and it counts as done only when you accept it. No agent can verify its own work.
- Structural restraint in git. No merge and no rebase from the panel, and nothing is deleted without your acceptance.
- Notebooks: end-to-end encrypted, free with no passphrase, and granted per Thread, so an agent gets the brief without you pasting it again.
The bottom line
These are close enough that the honest answer is to try both, and the choice comes down to what you actually want to track. If it is cost and agent state, crystl puts that front and centre. If it is whether a key ever had to reach the agent in the first place, whether an agent can mark its own work done, or whether a plan survives a closed pane, that's where Forkbench draws the line.
Keep reading
- How keys, notes and boards are actually protected, including where each defence stops.
- Keeping API keys away from AI coding agents
- Every comparison
Comparison based on publicly available information as of mid-2026. Spot something out of date? Tell us.