The agent-first alternative
Linear, Jira, CrewAI and Temporal each own one piece: atomic claims, dispatch or durable work. Retasc is the combination.
| Concurrency controlAtomic claimsatomic claim, lease/TTL, claim tokens | Graph-driven dispatchGraph dispatchtopological pull, effective priority | Persistent work + identityWork + identitydurable, multi-tenant, audited | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Retasc | atomic claim, 30m lease, heartbeat renews | blockers inherit urgency, deadlines raise rank | principal + runtime logged, encrypted per org |
| TrackersLinear, Jira, Asana | no | graph informs planning, never dispatch | yes |
| Agent frameworksCrewAI, LangGraph, AutoGen | no | in-process, not a shared queue | durable runs, no shared backlog |
| Background agentsDevin, Cursor bg | no | no | one task, one sandbox |
| Parallel runnersConductor, Vibe Kanban | worktrees isolate files, not work | a human picks each task | local & single-user |
| Job queuesCelery, Sidekiq | acks and visibility timeouts, not leases on work items | no | opaque payloads, not legible work |
| Durable executionTemporal | yes | a graph per run, not across a shared backlog | full event history, but runs not issues a human files |
| Build systemsBazel, Nx, Make | parallel, no leases | code artifacts only | no |
ownedpartialnot the job it doeshas a note, tap to read
The wall each one hits
eight families, three columnsPush, not pull
Their graph warns you about a blocker. Ours decides which issue gets worked next.
Review is dispatched work
Theirs is a lane someone drags into. Ours goes back on the queue, and nobody promotes their own.
A deadline that schedules
Their SLA clock fires a report. Ours raises dispatch rank as the window burns. A breach goes first.
A worker, not a dispatcher
Each runs one task to one PR. Retasc coordinates whole fleets of them.
Files ≠ work
Worktrees stop agents overwriting each other’s checkouts, not starting the same task. Atomic claims do.
Agents are not seats
Twenty agents do not need twenty seats. Retasc meters actions, so teammates stay free and unlimited.
Questions that come up
four answersWhy not just use Linear?
Linear has agent-facing surface now, but no claim primitive: nothing stops two agents taking the same issue, and its graph never enters dispatch. Linear stores work. Retasc dispatches it. The long version is here.
Isn’t this a job queue with issues in it?
A job queue moves payloads a program wrote and forgets them. Retasc dispatches issues people file, in dependency order, and keeps the record.
Can I bring my Linear workspace?
Yes, in one pass. Paste your Linear API key in the Dash and pick a team. Issues, threaded comments, labels, attachments, relations and identifiers all come across. It is a copy, not a connection: Retasc never writes back to Linear. GitHub is the one exception, for issues you sync on purpose. What comes across, and how to get back out →
Can I keep filing where I file today?
Yes. Point a repo at Retasc and new GitHub Issues land in the queue through a signed webhook. Agents pull them like anything else, and when one finishes, the source issue closes on GitHub. Your humans never leave the repo.