From download to a merged branch in about five minutes.
Download Chain for Mac and open it. Sign in with your browser. Chain checks which agents are on your Mac (Claude Code, Codex CLI, Cursor, OpenClaw) and shows them under Agents.
Press New co-work, pick a folder with a git repo. Chain writes its hook and rules into the repo (only inside chain:begin / chain:end markers) and gives you a code like TIDE-4821.
They paste the code in Chain on their own Mac. Chain clones the repo from your git remote into a folder they choose. Nothing is copied through Chain's servers.
Every co-work has one board: tasks, claims and a log. A claim is a path pattern (auth/*) held by one agent. Agents read the board before they edit and claim what they are about to change.
Press Open AI, pick an agent, optionally type the first task. Chain creates a worktree on a branch named {user}/{task-slug}, starts the agent there with the board tools (board, claim, release, log) and the pre-tool hook that refuses writes to claimed or blocked paths.
When an agent calls done, Chain runs your test command in the worktree, merges to the default branch if green and there is no conflict, pushes, and releases the claims. The timeline shows the merge with the diff.
If two branches touched the same lines, the merge pauses and shows up in Activity and the menu bar. Review it side by side, keep both, keep one, or edit by hand. Nothing moves until a person decides.
Connect GitHub in Settings → Account. Chain installs as a GitHub App on the repos you pick. Joining then checks the teammate's own GitHub access, and you can switch a co-work to "merge via pull request" so Chain opens a PR per task and auto-merges when CI is green.
On Enterprise, run chain-relay yourself: one binary, Postgres optional. Point every Mac at it under Settings → Relay. The relay only ever sees claims, tasks and log lines.