Published: 2026-06-08

Kilo Code Agent Manager: Orchestrate Parallel Agents with Isolated Work Trees

Chapters / key moments (click to jump — plays here on the page)

Kilo Code's Agent Manager brings a full kanban-style dashboard for running multiple coding agents simultaneously inside VS Code. Each agent card is backed by its own git work tree — complete isolation so agents never overwrite each other's files. You can also spin up two agents on the same task with different models and compare their diffs side by side before deciding which to merge.

Source video

"Kilo's Agent Manager | Orchestrate Parallel Agents" by Kilo Code — Watch on YouTube →

Key Takeaways

Git work tree isolation: every agent card runs in its own branch — file conflicts between parallel agents are impossible by design.
Kanban board: cards move through To Do → Doing → Done columns; pull request status is visible per card without leaving the Agent Manager.
Model selection per agent: create a new work tree and pick any available model (Claude Sonnet, Opus, GPT-5, etc.) independently for each task.
Side-by-side model comparison: run two agents on the identical prompt with different models to benchmark quality before merging.
One-click VS Code handoff: open any work tree as a full VS Code folder — IntelliSense, debugger, and terminal all available without switching apps.
Per-work-tree terminal: the built-in terminal auto-navigates to the correct directory for each agent, so debugging a failed task requires no manual cd.

What you can actually set up from this

Extracted from the video's own transcript — the specifics the original summary left out.

Reproducible steps

Open Agent Manager
Click the multi-agent button in Kilo Code's VS Code extension. It opens a full-screen board with To do, Doing and Done columns, and each agent is a card.
Give every agent its own git worktree
Each card is its own git worktree, so agents are isolated: an agent refactoring auth can't touch the files another is using to update docs. Click New worktree, write the prompt (the example is "implement Stripe checkout with webhook verification"), pick a model and a mode (the demo picks Claude Sonnet in Code mode) and click Create.
Compare models on the same prompt
Create a worktree again with the same prompt but select two models (the demo uses Claude Opus and GPT-5.5). You get two cards side by side, working in parallel on separate worktrees, unable to see each other.
Review, then open the winner in VS Code
Click Review changes for a side-by-side diff with syntax highlighting. To continue by hand, choose Open in VS Code on the worktree you prefer: it opens as a normal folder in a new window with your IDE, debugger and terminal, so you can run tests, edit and commit.
Fix a stuck agent from its card
Open the built-in terminal on a failed card; it is already in that worktree's directory. Fix the path or config yourself and the agent can pick up where it left off.
Finish and merge
Drag the card from Doing to Done. Pull request status is visible inside Agent Manager, and other agents keep running on their own worktrees while you merge.

Gotchas

The isolation comes from git worktrees, not from any per-agent sandbox: each agent can still run commands inside its own worktree.
This is a vendor demo; the video shows the UI, not the exact settings behind it, so check Kilo's docs for mode and model options.