Baton

Pass context between AI coding agents — seamlessly switch between Codex, Claude Code, OpenCode, Gemini CLI, Kiro, and more.

batonai.pages.dev

Baton is a desktop app that lets you hand off work between AI coding agents without losing context. It creates a structured Baton Pass — a markdown document capturing git diff, task state, decisions, and next steps — so the next agent picks up exactly where the last one left off.

How it works

1. Add a project — Baton creates a .baton/ bridge directory in it
2. Run an agent — launches in a PTY terminal with context from the project
3. Create a Baton Pass — captures git diff, task state, and decisions as a structured handoff document
4. Switch agents — the next agent reads the handoff and continues seamlessly

Sessions persist across app restarts via SQLite. Each session can be renamed or deleted from the sidebar.

Roadmap

Phase	What
v1 (current)	File-based handoff — agents exchange context via .baton/latest-handoff.md in the project directory
v2 (next)	Shared context memory layer — persistent memory that agents can read/write to across sessions, beyond a single handoff file
v3 (future)	Multi-agent teams — one "brain" agent orchestrates specialists (engineer, designer, tester). Users assemble their own team — for example, Codex as the brain, Claude as the designer, OpenCode as the engineer, Gemini as the tester. Build your own Avengers.

Local install

# 1. Clone the repo
git clone git@github.com:kzoldyk/baton.git
cd baton

# 2. Install dependencies
npm install

# 3. Run Baton in development
npm run dev

Build locally

# Typecheck and build Electron output
npm run build

# Create a local app package in release/
npm run dist

# macOS-only package command
npm run dist:mac

The generated macOS app/DMG is for local use unless it is signed and notarized with an Apple Developer account. Without Apple notarization, macOS may show Gatekeeper warnings. You can still run a local build manually from Finder or Terminal.

Optional persistent sessions

Baton can run agents without tmux, but persistent background sessions work best when tmux is installed.

macOS:

brew install tmux

Ubuntu/Debian:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install tmux

Fedora:

sudo dnf install tmux

Verify:

tmux -V

Agent CLI setup

Baton detects installed coding agents from your PATH. Install whichever agents you want to use, then restart Baton.

Common command names:

codex       # Codex
claude      # Claude Code
opencode    # OpenCode
gemini      # Gemini CLI
kiro-cli    # Kiro

On macOS, GUI apps can have a smaller PATH than your terminal. Baton checks common locations like /opt/homebrew/bin, /usr/local/bin, ~/.local/bin, ~/.bun/bin, ~/.deno/bin, and ~/.cargo/bin.

Supported agents

• Codex — codex
• Claude Code — claude
• OpenCode — opencode
• Gemini CLI — gemini
• Kiro CLI — kiro-cli