Claude Code as a background worker for your backlog

What it does

Cyrus sits between your backlog and your AI coding tool of choice. It watches for issues assigned to it in Linear, GitHub, GitLab, or Slack, spawns an isolated Git worktree for each one, and runs a full session with Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, or Gemini to resolve the ticket. Activity updates stream back to the issue tracker, complete with interactive elements like dropdowns and approval prompts.

The interesting bit

The isolation model is the hook: each ticket gets its own worktree, so your agent isn’t fumbling around in a shared workspace. It’s also strictly BYOK—you bring your own API keys and subscriptions—so the project avoids the usual SaaS markup on inference costs.

Key highlights

• Supports multiple AI backends: Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, Cursor, and Gemini
• Integrates with Linear, GitHub, GitLab, and Slack for both intake and status updates
• Self-hostable end-to-end with an AI-guided setup, or run as a managed cloud service
• Community tier is zero-cost outside of your existing API and platform subscriptions
• Apache 2.0 licensed

Caveats

• The paid “self-hosted” tier still routes networking and integrations through Cyrus’s cloud provider, so it isn’t fully air-gapped.
• The README is vague on concurrency limits, worktree cleanup, and how the agent handles merge conflicts or failed sessions.

Verdict

Teams already paying for AI coding subscriptions and drowning in well-scoped tickets might appreciate the automation. If you don’t trust an LLM to touch your codebase unsupervised, this is a hard pass.