Meta buys Conductor: the free Mac app's cloud shuts down November 20

Conductor, the free Mac app that lets developers run several AI coding agents in parallel, is joining Meta. The acquisition, announced on November 4, 2026, comes with a fast wind-down: Conductor Cloud workspaces go read-only on November 13 and shut down on November 20, when the company begins deleting cloud user data. If you use Conductor, you have about two weeks to move your workspaces and export your data.

What Conductor does

Launched in July 2025, Conductor is a Mac app for running parallel coding agents - Claude Code, Codex and Cursor - in isolated workspaces. Each agent works on a separate part of a project, and you review and merge their changes from one window. The agents themselves come from the major AI labs; Conductor is the control room that coordinates them. The app is free, with an optional pro plan, and could run workspaces locally or in Conductor's cloud.

The shutdown timeline

The company's announcement lays out exact dates:

• November 4, 2026: no new sign-ups, and the app can no longer be downloaded by new users. Existing free users can't upgrade to pro, but current pro users keep pro features for free.

• November 13, 2026: Conductor Cloud goes read-only. You can still read old chats and export data, but not send new messages. Active subscribers get a refund.

• November 20, 2026: Conductor Cloud shuts down and the company begins deleting cloud user data. Export before this date.

• Early 2027: the local app starts winding down. Until then it keeps working and still receives new models and critical bug fixes.

What to do before November 20

Two official routes exist. To keep working with a cloud workspace on your Mac, right-click it and choose Transfer to local. To download an archive of everything, go to Settings → Account → Export data. The team is taking questions at support@conductor.build.

On privacy, the announcement states that Conductor has never sold or trained on user data, and that all user data will be deleted when the app shuts down in early 2027.

Why it matters

Meta confirmed the acquisition to TechCrunch but gave no deal details. Founder Charlie Holtz said he will work with Alexandr Wang, Meta's chief AI officer, and Nat Friedman, head of product at Meta's Superintelligence Labs, and teased "something new" to use by early next year. For users, the pattern is a familiar one: a well-liked free tool gets absorbed by a large platform, and its cloud service disappears on a short clock. The local app survives for now, but its end date is already on the horizon.

If you relied on Conductor Cloud, treat November 20 as a hard deadline: transfer what you want to keep, export the rest, and don't assume the archive will exist afterward.

Image: the Conductor app, official screenshot from conductor.build.