Welcome to SwarmADE
Spec in. Swarm out. Queen-orchestrated.
SwarmADE is a desktop agentic development environment (ADE). You write a specification; a server-side orchestrator called the Queen decomposes it into tasks and dispatches a Swarm of Workers — the AI coding CLIs you already use (Claude, Codex, opencode, Aider, Cline, Goose, Cursor) — running locally on your machine. Automated Drones review every result before it lands.
New here? Start with Installation, then walk through your First Hive. It takes about ten minutes end-to-end.
The core ideas
A handful of terms appear everywhere in these docs. Learn them once:
- Hive — your workspace: a folder, its panel layout, the local Worker CLIs, and the Queen’s state for that project.
- Queen — the server-side orchestrator that plans a spec and drives execution.
- Workers — the local CLI agents that actually write code on your machine.
- Drones — automated server-side auditors that review each completed task.
- Swarm — the set of Workers active on a task at a given moment.
- Honey — the credit unit. Server-side work — Queen planning and Drone reviews — consumes Honey from your monthly allowance. Worker CLI calls run on your own subscription and do not.
- SwarmMemory — a local-first knowledge graph (Markdown + wikilinks) the Queen and Workers read and write as they go.
Where to go next
How a Hive runs, in one breath
Write a spec
Describe what you want built, in plain language, in the Hive.
The Queen plans
It decomposes the spec into a dependency-ordered task graph.
Workers execute
Your local CLIs pick up tasks and write code on your machine.
Drones review
Each result is audited; failures are retried or escalated back to you.
You only pay for what the Swarm actually does — see What consumes Honey.