The main difference is that Baton is agent-agnostic and terminal-native. It doesn't add a GUI on top of Claude Code or Codex, it builds around the terminal itself, so you run whatever agent CLI you want natively, but with convenient shortcuts for launching them. Which is a nicer experience in my view, but people have different views on this.
Baton is also more git-aware. Instead of just showing raw diff line counts, you see commits ahead and behind your target branch, so you can tell at a glance how far each workspace has diverged and shortcuts for resolving it in the matter you want.
One thing I think is unique is the built-in MCP server. It lets agents spawn new workspaces programmatically, so you use an agent to launch agents in new isolated workspaces.
Baton is also more git-aware. Instead of just showing raw diff line counts, you see commits ahead and behind your target branch, so you can tell at a glance how far each workspace has diverged and shortcuts for resolving it in the matter you want.
One thing I think is unique is the built-in MCP server. It lets agents spawn new workspaces programmatically, so you use an agent to launch agents in new isolated workspaces.