Symphony by OpenAI
Shares rank 16 of 26 agent orchestrators by recommenders
Open spec that lets coding agents pick up work from an issue tracker such as Linear or GitHub Issues, so tickets become the interface for the agent.
Open spec that lets coding agents pick up work from an issue tracker such as Linear or GitHub Issues, so tickets become the interface for the agent.
9 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 7
- criticize it
- 2
- approval share
- 78%
Recommended in 6 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 7 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 3.5 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 6 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Agents pick up tracker tickets
“Makes it super simple to just write up a spec on Linear, move it to "Todo", and an agent will pick it up in seconds.”
Comment from 30 Apr 2026 on Hacker News “Now I chat with OpenCode/Pi over Github issues, which is a miles better experience.”
Comment from 29 Sep 2026 in “GPT 6.1 Sol: Near-Astra intelligence for a fifth of the price” “It integrates with your issue tracker and makes the tracker the UI for the LLM.”
Comment from 14 May 2026 in “Work with Codex from Anywhere” - Comment from 7 Mar 2026 in “Show HN: Contrabass – Go and Charm Stack Implementation of OpenAI's Symphony”
Other agent orchestrators people recommend
The four most recommended other agent orchestrators, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gas Town | 95 | 212 | 31% | 10 | 1 mo3 owners | — |
| Conductor | 58 | 25 | 70% | 11 | — | Approved |
| Superset | 33 | 16 | 67% | 8 | 2 mo4 owners | Approved |
| Scion by Google | 28 | 32 | 47% | 8 | — | — |
| Symphony by OpenAIThis page | 7 | 2 | 78% | 6 | — | — |
What people said
11 of the 12 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“It works extremely well for me.”
“Now I chat with OpenCode/Pi over Github issues, which is a miles better experience.”
“it was becoming too difficult to manage”
“I no longer use a harness directly, instead I use Github issues/Linear to work on multiple tickets in parallel”
“It integrates with your issue tracker and makes the tracker the UI for the LLM.”
“Makes it super simple to just write up a spec on Linear, move it to "Todo", and an agent will pick it up in seconds.”
“This is cool. I've been waiting for something like this!”
“The Symphony model is interesting — it pushes task management up to Linear”
“The specs are inscrutable agent slop. I want it to tell me what it does and instead it just lists database fields.”
“I'm more impressed at them sharing the spec and encourage others to build their own”
“symphony is a direct implementation of the types of things Jido can do”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.