Factory is rolling out a new desktop app that brings its “Droids” into a native interface on macOS and Windows, aiming to make multi-agent work feel less like juggling terminals and more like running a set of persistent, trackable sessions across a team’s day-to-day workflows.
The pitch is straightforward: Droids already operate across engineering-adjacent tasks, but a desktop surface can make that capability easier to manage—especially when several agents are running in parallel, each with its own context and history.
Multi-agent sessions, treated like first-class tabs
At the center of the desktop app is support for running multiple Droids at once. Each session appears in a sidebar and keeps its own context, progress, and history, making it possible to kick off separate streams of work—like a feature build and a migration—without losing position in either thread.
That framing matters for teams that increasingly treat agent work as a background process: start it, switch away, then return when it’s ready to review.
Persistent “Droid Computers”: state that survives the workday
Factory is also leaning into the idea that an agent shouldn’t “boot” from scratch each time. The desktop app ties into Droid Computers, which preserve state such as installed packages, cloned repos, credentials, and running services.
There are a few ways this can be set up:
- Cloud Computers provisioned and managed from Factory, with actions like wake/sleep, checkpoint/restore, persistent storage, and SSH access.
- BYO Machine, which registers existing hardware via
droid computer register(workstations, on-prem servers, GPU rigs). - Local model support for registered machines with GPUs, using Factory’s BYOK to connect to Ollama, vLLM, or other compatible endpoints—positioned for cases where no data leaves the network, including air-gapped deployments.
The desktop app acts as the control plane for these machines, exposing status, logs, and configuration in one place.
“Computer use” goes beyond a sandboxed chat
A notable piece is desktop automation: Droids can control applications directly—navigating VS Code, working with browser tabs, reading documents, operating terminals, and interacting with whatever is running on the desktop.
Factory’s examples span both software and non-software workflows: opening a staging environment and clicking through a flow to report breakage, switching to VS Code to run an extension command and act on output, or pulling data from a spreadsheet to update other artifacts.
VS Code integration, plus dynamic visual output
The release also includes VS Code integration that can connect to a VS Code server (local or remote) from inside the desktop app, with support for browsing files, using a terminal, editing code, and running extensions—tied to a Droid session.
On the presentation side, Factory describes AI-native visualization, where Droids choose how to render results inline—Mermaid diagrams, charts, tables, dashboards, and metrics. The examples include a flame chart for performance regression work and dependency graphs for migrations.
Plugins and mobile support carry over
Factory says the desktop app supports the broader ecosystem—MCP, skills, hooks, and plugins—with skills remaining portable across “surfaces” and shareable by checking them into a repo.
There’s also a mobile angle: the company notes that the full Factory experience runs on phones and tablets, with synced sessions, settings, and skills, so work started on desktop can be monitored or continued elsewhere.
Availability and security model
Factory says the desktop app is available today on macOS and Windows across all Factory plans, with usage included in existing subscriptions. It also inherits the CLI’s security model: commands run locally, risky operations require approval, and data is encrypted in transit and at rest. Existing CLI or IDE extension users can carry over sessions, settings, and skills automatically.
More details are in the desktop app docs and quickstart.