Agent OS is designed to work with any AI coding tool. That's right: Whether you use Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Gemini, Windsurf, or whatever hot new tool drops next week, you can use Agent OS with it.
Agent OS' unique advantage is it's dual-architecture:
- Multi-agent mode for tools with subagents. i.e. Claude Code.
- Single-agent mode for tools without subagents. i.e. any AI coding tool.
Using Agent OS with tools that support subagents
Multi-agent mode in Agent OS is designed for tools that support the ability to orchestrate and delegate tasks to multiple specialized subagents.
Currently, Claude Code is the only major tool that supports subagents.
When using Agent OS in multi-agent mode with Claude Code, Agent OS will:
- Generate specialized subagents and places them in your
.claude/agents/folder - Generate specialized commands and places them in your
.claude/commands/folder - Inject your standards and instructions into those subagents and commands
- Orchestrate and delegate tasks to those subagents and commands
- Run verifiers subagents to review the work for quality
Using Agent OS with tools that don't support subagents
Single-agent mode in Agent OS is designed for tools that don't support the ability to orchestrate and delegate tasks to multiple specialized subagents. This is effectively all AI coding tools, since in all cases, you're intereacting with one coding agent via your AI tool's chat interface.
When using Agent OS in single-agent mode with tools that don't support subagents, Agent OS will:
- Generate numbered prompts and places them in your
agent-os/commands/folder - Orchestrate each spec's implementation with specialized generated prompts, which you can run sequentially in your AI tool
- Inject your standards and instructions into those prompts
To use Agent OS with any tool, you can simply run each of the Agent OS workflow commands by @ referencing the command's markdown file and appending "run this" (or similar) to your prompt.
For example, to run the create-spec command, you can prompt your AI coding agent with this:
@agent-os/commands/create-spec/1-create-spec.md run thisThat's just one example example. For the full list of commands and the sequence in which you can run them, be sure to follow the Spec-driven development workflow with Agent OS page.