Introduction

Axel is agent orchestration designed for Rex. You type what you want done and press Enter. A named agent picks it up and works on it in a thread, in your terminal, on this machine or another one on your tailnet.

› fix the flaky auth test @atlas                                 atlas · api

It runs the agents you already use (Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode) as their real CLIs, and adds the layer around them: who each agent is, what it may do, what it's working on, what it costs, and where it runs.

What we learned, back in the terminal

The past year of agent tools taught us what works. Axel keeps those ideas and brings them home to the terminal:

Threads, from the Codex app and T3 Code. The unit of work is a thread, not a chat tab: an intent and everything done about it, outliving the agent's process, the pane and the machine. Run several at once, come back tomorrow, resume, settle. More on threads.

Named agents, from Buzz and skills.sh. Instead of one assistant that knows everything, a team of specialists. atlas builds with a few skills for your stack; nova reviews with a different model and a review skill. Each has its own Ed25519 key, permissions and budget, and they can ask each other for help within limits you set. More on agents.

The terminal, from Rex. Those tools rebuilt the terminal inside an app because the old terminal couldn't keep work alive, show who's waiting on you, reach your other machines, or even scroll a long conversation without a TUI or tmux mangling it. Rex can: durable sessions, a status protocol the terminal understands, Tailscale built in, real scrollback, and an API programs can drive. That's the foundation Axel is built on. Why Rex.

And because it's built that way

• Your agents can run elsewhere. @atlas@mini runs atlas on your Mac mini, in its Rex session, over your tailnet. Its key never leaves your laptop. Close the lid; the work comes home when you reconnect.
• No babysitting. Routine permissions follow each agent's mode; a guard refuses irreversible commands; budgets cap spend. When an agent does need you, Rex shows it on the tab.
• No screen scraping. Status comes from Claude Code hooks, Codex notify, the Agent Client Protocol, or axel status, mirrored to Rex.

Where to go next