Herdr: The Terminal Multiplexer That Unifies Your AI Coding Agents
Herdr: One terminal to rule them all
I built Herdr to solve the fragmentation of running multiple AI coding agents. Unlike desktop apps, this binary multiplexer runs inside your terminal, keeping sessions alive on servers even when you disconnect. You can manage agents like Claude Code or Codex from any device, including your phone, while maintaining full control over persistent PTY sessions without needing accounts or telemetry.
Most agent managers are apps. Herdr is a multiplexer.
- spudlyo
So I've tried to figure out why you might want to use this over Tmux, and essentially I think it comes to down to:
- everything is mouse clickable
- tmux style display-popups are used for friendly UI interactions everywhere
- it has a UI for agents running in panes, with a cool status (idle/working) display
- has opinionated defaults like automatic clipboard copy on mouse text select
- makes nested sessions easier & has default affordances for remote SSH attach
- is generally prettier
- uses display-popups for notifications
Otherwise it seems exactly like tmux.
- bloody-crow
I've been using tmux historically and it eventually became too cumbersome since my typical workflow started being a lot more AI-agent heavy. I now run over 10 agents at the same time and they're all working on some multi-hour workstreams that I occasionally need to check in on or unblock. Tmux was not making this particularly easy and I would occasionally lose an agent or forget about it until much later only to realize it's been sitting idle waiting for me to approve something for a few days.
I've tried Cmux, but it didn't do it for me, since the agent statuses were displayed on the workspaces and having multiple agents in the same workspace would sometime produce confusing results.
I've been using Herdr since the start of the week and so far it's been the best in terms of visibility of what my agents are doing and which of them need attention. The only wart I've noticed so far is that the performance is not always great — sometimes I see the text appearing with a noticeable delay as I type it.
- graypegg
> Popular with engineers from... (bunch of logos)
> Individual engineers, not company endorsements.
Bold haha. Maybe that's fine with the disclaimer, but feels like lawyer-bait.
- ptgamr
I've just added herdr support for TermRover at https://termrover.sh
Tmux is still the default, but you can switch to herdr if you're a herdr fan.
- 3abiton
I still don't fully get the additional value over tmux, beside notification regarding the agent status?
- robgough
I'm a big tmux fan, but admittedly I've found myself switching between a lot of sessions recently and wishing it was a little bit more mouse friendly.
If you're a Mac user, and can forgive the shameless plug, you might find belfry.robgough.net useful. Connects to local and remote machines entirely through tmux, ssh and libghostty - populating the sidebar from tmux session info, and optionally adds a little Claude visibility in there for good measure.
There's even an iOS/iPadOS version – though for the moment you'll need to build that yourself. Source is all on Github.
- chaoxu
Herdr did a lot of things really well.
It have a great landing page where you can see and interact, and that really made me try it, and a few of my friend was also captured and immediately understood what it is for. I basically do everything remote, never on my own machine.
Once I tried it, I can never go back. It is so simple and worked exactly as I thought how it should work.
I would say it is just a modern version of tmux but really thought about user experience of more novice users. For people who come from the mouse world, moving to this is quite seamless.
Also, coming to the comments, I would think maybe `zellij` would also work well. Or use `zmc` and build something on top. `zmc` is great, as the then the tab/window management can be handled by the desktop or TUI, depend on what someone want to use.
- linsomniac
I've been using Herdr for running my AI agents and it has been really nice. I like that I can reconnect to it from multiple sessions (I have one up in a window on my desktop, and when I ssh in from my "after hours" laptop I can also attach to it there and continue one if I'm at my son's Dr appt or the like. I can also attach to it natively from my Mac over SSH transport as well as resuming a remote wezterm connection that is running herdr.
A few small downsides: I can't copy/paste in wezterm using the keyboard/vim keys because it is constantly drawing the screen and unselects my selection. The mouse drag in herdr works very well though. It'd also be nice if you could rebind key mappings in the UI, because I still haven't rebound the keys and am using the mouse.