Bernstein — a deterministic multi-agent orchestrator with a Textual dashboard

[chernistry]

I've been building Bernstein: an orchestrator that runs fleets of CLI coding agents (Claude Code, Codex, Aider — 40+ adapters) against a task backlog. The coordination layer is a deterministic Python scheduler, not another LLM.

The operator surface is a Textual app: split-pane task list plus live agent log, an approval panel for gated tool calls, a cost sparkline in the sidebar, an ASCII dependency graph, vim-mode navigation, dark/light themes, configurable keybindings. Textual is what let all of it stay in the terminal — the dashboard survives SSH sessions and doesn't care about tmux.

A note for other Textual builders: with many live panes the win was dirty-flag layout caching — skip layout recalculation entirely when nothing changed since the last frame. That was the difference between sluggish and instant.

Repo: https://github.com/sipyourdrink-ltd/bernstein

Happy to answer questions about driving Textual at this widget count.