[HN Gopher] Herdr is joining Y Combinator. The runtime stays open
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Herdr is joining Y Combinator. The runtime stays open
        
       Author : collinmanderson
       Score  : 243 points
       Date   : 2026-08-06 19:14 UTC (18 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (herdr.dev)
 (TXT) w3m dump (herdr.dev)
        
       | nlh wrote:
       | I am a HUGE herdr fan - discovered it a few months ago and it's
       | exactly what I need for my workflow. Thousands of others have
       | discovered it as well, which is awesome.
       | 
       | I have such mixed feelings about this - YC means VC means
       | commercialization means enshitification. I really wish that
       | weren't the case, but it so very often is.
       | 
       | Here's hoping this one's different...
       | 
       | (PS I am a big YC fan in general! I don't mean to sound anti-YC
       | or anti-VC or anti-capitalism. But when it comes to low-level
       | essential development tools, I'll never forget what happened to
       | Warp, which started out as such a nice clean terminal project and
       | turned into an absolute money-chasing mess.)
        
         | tamimio wrote:
         | Yeah, it's great but with this, it's probably the time to find
         | an alternative, I probably can see where this will be in a year
         | or so.
        
           | pecheny wrote:
           | why "find" an alternative? if you're a herdr user you're
           | perfectly capable of maintaining a fork just for yourself :)
        
             | sarky-litso wrote:
             | I can't tell if this is sarcasm but in case its not, being
             | capable of doing something and having the desire and
             | resources to do it are not the same thing
        
               | inigyou wrote:
               | It's a management tool for multiple superintelligent
               | agents, right? Just tell one of them to fork herdr so VC
               | can't make it worse on purpose.
        
               | pecheny wrote:
               | Not sarcasm at all. I think you might overestimate the
               | time and effort needed for this. When you maintain a
               | _personal_ fork with no users except yourself, you only
               | ever need to change something when you encounter a bug or
               | need a new feature.
               | 
               | E.g. I have personal forks of mosh and cmux, each took
               | maybe 1 hour of my time total?
               | 
               | I found this article
               | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49156111 resonating
               | with me, except I obviously don't do stuff like "nightly
               | cron to sync with main", I just never touch the code
               | unless it breaks or I want a new feature.
        
               | lawrencechen wrote:
               | Very curious about your cmux fork, any chance you could
               | link the repo? (Maker of cmux here :))
        
               | pecheny wrote:
               | Oh wow :) thank you for cmux, it's a great project!
               | 
               | The code is here: https://code.pecheny.me/pecheny/cmux or
               | if you prefer github, https://github.com/alexander-
               | pecheny/cmux
               | 
               | I think I only added two features, pasting images over
               | mosh (ssh already worked but not mosh) and a compact
               | version of sidebar.
               | 
               | The story behind the fork is: I had a bug with raycast,
               | filed a PR that fixed it for me
               | https://github.com/manaflow-ai/cmux/pull/2435, a
               | different fix made it into next release that for me
               | didn't work. Maybe the problem was on my side, but at
               | this point it was easier to fork the working version than
               | debug further.
        
         | an0malous wrote:
         | It's literally the VC playbook, the whole point of the funding
         | is to undermine competitors with subsidized/free products and
         | then raise prices/enshittify. Anyone who thinks it'll be
         | different this time is fooling themselves.
        
         | scubbo wrote:
         | > I am a big YC fan in general
         | 
         | Genuine question - why?
        
         | tomhow wrote:
         | > YC means VC means commercialization means enshitification
         | 
         | It doesn't have to be that way. YC partners are supportive if
         | you just want to take the YC funding and nothing more, keeping
         | the team small and just focusing on making the product better
         | for customers. Indeed YC advises against taking VC if you don't
         | need it.
        
           | abirch wrote:
           | Yes there are companies such as Streak. It's possible to pay
           | back early funders so it's a win-win.
        
         | Fervicus wrote:
         | > Here's hoping this one's different...
         | 
         | It won't be.
        
       | EGreg wrote:
       | Wow, congrats! Can you discuss how you got YCombinator to select
       | your open source project? I know they sometimes fund open
       | source... I've been building several large platforms since 2011
       | but I have never considered applying like that.
       | 
       | Would something like this qualify:
       | 
       | https://github.com/Qbix
       | 
       | https://github.com/Intercoin
       | 
       | https://github.com/Safebots/Safecloud
        
         | rrr_oh_man wrote:
         | the secret sauce is traction
        
       | humblepie wrote:
       | Okay, back to tmux it is then.
        
         | lrvick wrote:
         | I am going to be PRing herdr to stagex as it is my daily
         | driver. This will give it a totally independent release process
         | with multiple parties bootstrapping, reproducing, and signing
         | deterministic binaries for it alongside our tmux releases.
         | 
         | We (the stagex team) will naturally patch out any corpo
         | tracking bullshit that may or may not happen in the future, and
         | follow the dominant community fork should it be needed, as we
         | did with terraform -> opentofu.
         | 
         | As long as herdr does not enshittify though, we will be happy
         | to provide very high supply chain integrity releases for it as-
         | is starting with probably next months stagex release.
         | 
         | Absolutely no problem with FOSS developers finding revenue
         | streams to give themselves more resources to make their
         | projects better.
         | 
         | My own company is 100% FOSS with nothing held back and will
         | stay that way, even though we are in the current YC batch with
         | more customers signing every week. Admittedly this is atypical,
         | but it can be done.
        
         | dgunay wrote:
         | Over the last year I ended up duct taping a lot of
         | functionality onto tmux to get what these new age multiplexers
         | set out to do (session launch, live agent status, etc). And it
         | works, but it definitely feels like duct tape.
         | 
         | I'm not sure the tmux project wants to evolve to support this
         | natively so for now herdr seems like one of the best open and
         | forkable options available. Considering how little I've had to
         | really touch my tmux setup after getting it going I don't think
         | it's necessarily the worst thing in the world if the FOSS
         | community maintains a deshittified fork of herdr, should it
         | come to that.
        
           | natsucks wrote:
           | I've been wondering what the point of a lot of these new
           | multiplexer projects are when tmux is so extensible. I'd be
           | curious to see eactly what you've done. Care to share a tmux
           | config?
        
             | dgunay wrote:
             | It's less the tmux config and more the scripting around it.
             | 
             | (shameless plug: I launch agents in tmux directly into
             | docker containers with remuda, a tool I built at work &
             | open sourced [0])
             | 
             | Anyway, I have a vibe coded script that shows me this
             | overview for each of the agents I launch in tmux (hope this
             | doesn't turn out mangled):                 +-------+-------
             | ----+------------+-------------+---------------------------
             | --------------------+       | AGENT | PR        | REPO
             | | BRANCH      | ISSUE
             | |       +-------+-----------+------------+-------------+---
             | --------------------------------------------+       | ready
             | | draft   | <redacted> | branch1     | Fix data race in e2e
             | mock AssertExpectations  |       | ready |           |
             | <redacted> | branch2     | Modernize such and such
             | |       | ready | open    | <redacted> | branch3     |
             | JIRA-123: some sprint work                    |       +----
             | ---+-----------+------------+-------------+----------------
             | -------------------------------+
             | 
             | The agent status column (ready/working/etc) is just using
             | heuristics from the terminal title (since a lot of
             | harnesses have the live status in the title) or tmux
             | capture-pane
             | 
             | The rest of the fields are either the gh cli or from beads,
             | detected from the branch name (using
             | https://github.com/Dicklesworthstone/beads_rust).
             | 
             | My session switcher is cool (shows the session name and the
             | issue title + a preview of the issue details) but
             | ultimately also along those lines; tmux itself doesn't do a
             | whole lot, it's just being extensible and letting me run an
             | fzf pipeline enriched with data from beads.
             | 
             | This works great for me personally but the part that
             | actually pulls data out of the agent sessions is built on
             | heuristics, and I didn't even attempt to get notifications
             | out of it, I just side channel those out using peon-ping[1]
             | 
             | [0]: https://github.com/yendo-eng/remuda [1]:
             | https://github.com/PeonPing/peon-ping
        
               | natsucks wrote:
               | very cool. thanks!
        
         | chrysoprace wrote:
         | I started noticing problems with MCP auth state failing inside
         | herdr, but working in a normal terminal session or with tmux,
         | so I switched back to using tmux and it's been flawless. I also
         | noticed that herdr was causing errors/warnings in ordinary
         | terminal sessions so it's more trouble than it's worth at the
         | moment (at least for me). It's a shame though, since I
         | otherwise think it's a good tool.
        
         | haykot wrote:
         | I built hive that's similar to herdr but sits beside tmux
         | instead. It provides a nice status UI on top of tmux instead of
         | building the multiplexer. It also has a bunch of other
         | utilities for working with agents like a message bus and task
         | management framework.
         | 
         | https://github.com/colonyops/hive
        
         | SierraJC wrote:
         | Give it a whirl with Workmux! I moved from Herdr to Workmux +
         | Tmux about a month ago and am enjoying it. Significantly more
         | flexibility.
        
         | qudat wrote:
         | Try https://zmx.sh for a more minimalist tool
        
       | ValentineC wrote:
       | > _That's why I recently switched it from AGPL to Apache: I want
       | everyone to use Herdr freely, without any problem._
       | 
       | I'm curious what the actual problems with AGPL were.
        
         | rajangdavis wrote:
         | Can't make money if people use your tool and are required to
         | share their source code
        
           | spudlyo wrote:
           | Radix enim omnium malorum est cupiditas. Enshitification is
           | sure to follow in one guise or another.
        
             | rajangdavis wrote:
             | I don't know that this qualifies as enshitification... on
             | one hand, the author created something that scratched his
             | own itch, shared it, and now it's become a tool that he
             | wishes to steward into a way where he can make money.
             | 
             | I don't know that these are terrible things inherently, it
             | kind of depends if he wishes to extract as money as
             | possible from his users by any means necessary or if he's
             | truly trying to scale it so it can help people. All we have
             | is this article and infinite speculation.
             | 
             | I personally didn't find herdr useful, so I have no stake
             | in the direction of what the author decides to do with
             | herdr.
        
               | spudlyo wrote:
               | In my cynical view, herder now seems to be an attempt to
               | commercialize tmux by adding superficial polish. I am
               | wary of VC backed developer tools that seek to innovate
               | in well established open source niches. Herdr by default
               | is mouse focused, has very friendly UI interactions, and
               | has some niche UI support for agents running in panes.
               | Great. Now it also has a profit motive and ROI pressures.
               | I don't see this ending well.
        
               | inigyou wrote:
               | If he wants to make money he needs to _sell licenses_ ,
               | not give them away for free. To that end, making the free
               | version AGPL is generally a good move. It ensures people
               | can get hooked on your product and when they start
               | working at corporations they have to pay to keep using
               | it.
        
               | yoyohello13 wrote:
               | Enshitification is 100% guaranteed with any vc backing.
               | Maybe not now, but definitely in the future it is the
               | literal point of venture capital. Gain adoption, then
               | exploit to the maximum extent possible.
               | 
               | It's fine to use these kind of tools, just don't get too
               | attached and be ready for the rug pull.
        
           | 6P58r3MXJSLi wrote:
           | You can totally make money if people use your tool
           | 
           | It's companies using your tool that don't want to give back
           | to the people
        
         | koiueo wrote:
         | No money from investors
        
         | tyre wrote:
         | The copyleft licenses are toxic for adoption. Companies default
         | away from them because there are a lot of murky unknowns (e.g.
         | if you run a copyleft service and connect to it via API, is
         | that extending it? Does that service's source have to be
         | shared?) that simply aren't worth the hassle.
         | 
         | If you want your library to get traction with many real world
         | use cases, you need to have a permissive license. If you want
         | to stick to the principles, you're going to sacrifice adoption.
         | 
         | Not saying one is better than the other, but there's a
         | tradeoff.
        
           | guywithahat wrote:
           | I'm not sure why you're being downvoted, you're right. Using
           | software that has requires people to contribute back is a
           | huge liability, and hurts adoption, which is the most
           | important metric for herdr right now.
        
             | toomuchtodo wrote:
             | Seems like the path is to use LLMs to launder code from VC
             | funded efforts and their public codebases into codebases
             | with a copyleft license. Otherwise you have to wait for the
             | rug pull before taking action (Terraform and
             | Vault->OpenTofu and OpenBao). It is fair use to train and
             | create derivative works after all, as courts have ruled so
             | far.
        
               | inigyou wrote:
               | You can just take someone else's permissively licensed
               | code and relicense it AGPL, or even proprietary if you
               | want to. Corporations want it proprietary but the same
               | trick works for copyleft.
               | 
               | For bonus points make sure your fork has better SEO than
               | the original, so when someone who heard it's permissive
               | embeds it in a proprietary product, you can sue them.
        
               | toomuchtodo wrote:
               | Was assuming worse case scenario from a licensing
               | compatibility and copyright perspective.
        
             | inigyou wrote:
             | They're right, but they're presenting it in a way as if the
             | toxicity of AGPL is the actual truth, and not just the
             | opinion of greedy corporations.
             | 
             | Being toxic to greedy corporations but beneficial to
             | everyone else is the _point_ of the GPL licenses.
        
               | icantevenhold wrote:
               | But it's not only toxic to the greedy corporations but
               | all the others as well, hence
        
               | inigyou wrote:
               | How so? You might be thinking of SSPL.
        
               | a2ff6eeb0 wrote:
               | Why is it toxic for me to need to push my code to a git
               | repo if I start using it in my services, if I'm not
               | trying to act as a for-profit corporation?
        
               | jraph wrote:
               | You can totally make profits by selling services based on
               | AGPL code btw, it's completely fine. As long as you
               | redistribute your derivative work as AGPL too.
               | 
               | There's nothing toxic in the AGPL for you as long as you
               | don't want to make that code proprietary (even without
               | making profits)
        
               | inigyou wrote:
               | AGPL says nothing about pushing code to repos.
        
               | jraph wrote:
               | No. There's no restriction of usage in the (A)GPL.
               | Anyone, including big corps, can use AGPL software.
               | Preventing them to use the software is _not_ the point
               | neither. The point is trying to ensure end user freedom.
               | 
               | They just choose avoid agpl software. Their loss.
               | Unfortunately they also spread FUD on this and many
               | commenters here happily convey it.
        
               | outofpaper wrote:
               | AGREED! Its sheer insanity to call the AGPL toxic. The
               | license is actually quite simple if a little wordy. They
               | should have accompanied it with a preamble that was super
               | clear and to the point.So here it is in our 170 words for
               | you to read, share, and use:
               | 
               | Copyright (c) [year] [copyright holders]
               | 
               | Permission is hereby granted to any person obtaining a
               | copy of this software and associated documentation files,
               | to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute,
               | sublicense, and sell copies of the software, including
               | for commercial purposes, subject to the following
               | conditions:
               | 
               | If you distribute this software, or any work derived from
               | it, you must release the complete source code under this
               | same licence. If you modify this software and users
               | interact with your version over a network -- as a web
               | application, an API, or a hosted service -- you must
               | offer those users the complete source code of your
               | version, at no charge. All copies must include this
               | copyright notice and this licence. You may not impose
               | additional licence restrictions beyond this.
               | 
               | These permissions are irrevocable and royalty-free for
               | the term of copyright. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS,"
               | WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND. This is a plain-language
               | summary. The full legal text of the GNU Affero General
               | Public License, version 3, governs all use for you.
               | 
               | Same rights. Same freedoms only a little more opiniated
               | delivery. Same business card. The only difference: when
               | someone takes your code, tweakes it and builds a service
               | on it, the tweaks, the improvements must come back.
        
               | inigyou wrote:
               | Did an AI write this? By all means get an AI to summarise
               | a license but the summary doesn't substitute for the
               | license.
        
             | croes wrote:
             | > Using software that has requires people to contribute
             | back is a huge liability, and hurts adoption,
             | 
             | In other words, not being a parasite is stressful.
             | 
             | Cruel world where I'm not allowed to just take, take, take
        
           | tlamponi wrote:
           | > if you run a copyleft service and connect to it via API, is
           | that extending it
           | 
           | No, it isn't; a client talking to an AGPLv3 service over a
           | network API stays a separate program and is not touched by
           | the license at all. Section 13 places obligations solely on
           | whoever runs a modified version of the service, while remote
           | users, API clients included, only gain the right to receive
           | that service's source. So nothing on the client side must
           | suddenly become AGPLv3, and the only thing that ever has to
           | be shared is the AGPL'd program itself, not anything across
           | the API boundary. The first half of your post is basically
           | unfounded FUD; the second half tracks.
        
             | mbreese wrote:
             | You may think this. I may think this. But what really
             | matters is if the lawyers for your customers think this. It
             | may be pure FUD, but AGPL projects have a tough time
             | getting adoption in companies because they would rather
             | avoid the problem than be wrong.
        
               | waterproof wrote:
               | This is true, unfortunately. I've have had to walk away
               | from a client because their software-illiterate lawyer
               | didn't want me to build with copyleft dependencies.
               | 
               | It wasn't the only red flag in this case, but frustrating
               | nonetheless.
        
               | Tepix wrote:
               | The license is clear. Your post merely adds to the FUD.
        
               | inigyou wrote:
               | If they're _customers_ , just sell them the license they
               | want.
        
               | p_l wrote:
               | That's the real problem with AGPL, IMO - it encourages
               | copyright assignment to a corporate entity so it can
               | launder it through dual-licensing
        
               | tlamponi wrote:
               | We have been running a business on exactly the opposite
               | premise for over 20 years, and we're not really seeing
               | that problem with the adoption of Proxmox VE or our other
               | (AGPLv3) FLOSS projects that we provide commercial
               | enterprise support for. Very rarely, a potential customer
               | doing extra due diligence, and not yet used to working
               | with FLOSS much, wonders about exactly this - which is
               | also the main reason I bothered writing anything here, as
               | spreading such FUD further only hurts everyone involved.
               | In those cases, a simple reply that a) this makes no
               | sense (more on that below) and b) an assurance in writing
               | that none of their software running on top of, or
               | interfacing with, any of our APIs has to be relicensed
               | settles it. That assurance is technically useless, as it
               | doesn't grant them anything extra, but it costs us
               | nothing either.
               | 
               | And the reason it makes no sense is that by your logic,
               | any tool that can consume some (e.g. HTTP-based REST) API
               | would have to be open-sourced the moment I get it to
               | fetch data from my AGPLv3 service. No offense meant at
               | all, but that would simply be bizarro world, and there is
               | enough precedent against it. If APIs did not act as clear
               | boundaries, AGPLv3 software would indeed spread to
               | everything it touches or traverses, like an epidemic. If
               | yours or your customers' lawyers claim otherwise,
               | you/they should get ones with an actual understanding of
               | software and IP law.
        
         | inigyou wrote:
         | [flagged]
        
         | yoyohello13 wrote:
         | FUD, can't take investment when your project actually enforces
         | user freedom.
        
       | dominotw wrote:
       | wtf is "runtime"
        
         | albertgoeswoof wrote:
         | What does stays open mean
        
           | fwip wrote:
           | It means the headline was vomited out by an LLM.
        
             | inigyou wrote:
             | It's a tool for managing 20 LLM agents at the same time
             | isn't it? They know their audience loves this slop.
        
       | rvz wrote:
       | Quick question: Would you have actually donated to Herdr if they
       | were asking for donations? I don't think any of you would have,
       | unless stated otherwise.
       | 
       | So this is another reason why developers do not pay for their
       | tools and instead the developers of these tools go to VCs anyway.
       | It's not the fault of the author, but most of the users
       | (developers themselves) _always_ want their tools for free at $0.
       | 
       | You have to pay and support the tools you use or else the VCs
       | will do it for you so you can't complain when scenarios like this
       | keep happening.
        
         | applfanboysbgon wrote:
         | Yep. It's funny how much open source maximalists harm their own
         | cause. Everything must be "free", ergo everything must be VC or
         | big tech backed because free doesn't put bread on the table, so
         | in the end devs just put more power in the hands of
         | corporations and less power in the hands of themselves and
         | other independent devs/small businesses, and then have the gall
         | to complain when everything gets enshittified.
        
         | hx8 wrote:
         | I don't love this framing among software developers. This
         | framing is very transactional, when many of the authors are
         | explicitly trying to make their work free. The best thing a
         | software dev can do is donate some of their time to do more
         | open source development, and in that way we all benefit from
         | having more and better open source tools. If someone wants to
         | exchange code for money there are plenty of avenues to do that.
         | Starting an open source project and using it to attract VC
         | funding is one path.
        
           | rvz wrote:
           | > I don't love this framing among software developers. This
           | framing is very transactional, when many of the authors are
           | explicitly trying to make their work free.
           | 
           | This software _was_ "free" (as in libre) and costed $0 and
           | until now, it was licensed under AGPL 3. But contrary to one
           | common misbelief in open source and free software, the
           | maintenance is not free at all.
           | 
           | > The best thing a software dev can do is donate some of
           | their time to do more open source development, and in that
           | way we all benefit from having more and better open source
           | tools. If someone wants to exchange code for money there are
           | plenty of avenues to do that.
           | 
           | In the case of this project which took off, why would you
           | expect the maintainer to work on the project for free?
        
         | bigyabai wrote:
         | Are you lamenting the death of proprietary UNIX and paid
         | compilers, too? This status quo is fine.
        
           | rvz wrote:
           | > Are you lamenting the death of proprietary UNIX and paid
           | compilers, too?
           | 
           | You are straw-manning a point no-one made. Herdr is open
           | source and if the users would like to see it maintained for a
           | long time, they would donate $$$. Clearly the donations were
           | no-where enough and raising money was.
           | 
           | The point is maintaining open source projects for free is NOT
           | sustainable and most HNers in this thread clearly struggle
           | with not understanding that.
           | 
           | > This status quo is fine.
           | 
           | Seems like you would want him to work for free, then wait
           | until the author becomes demotivated and then he abandons the
           | project entirely and we'll see a new post about why Herdr got
           | abandoned.
        
             | bigyabai wrote:
             | > if the users would like to see it maintained for a long
             | time, they would donate $$$.
             | 
             | That's a bad-faith dilemma, you know it. The users can want
             | to see it maintained without necessarily having the money,
             | userbase or motivation to sponsor the lead dev. It's not
             | criminal to have a tight pocketbook, and that's why free
             | devtools succeed while paid ones rot. There will be always
             | be a FOSS version of Herdr, and thanks to vibe coding it
             | will probably retain feature parity with the paid version.
             | 
             | Everyone is happier with this arrangement, you're one of
             | the only ones fulminating at the outcome.
             | 
             | > Seems like you would want him to work for free
             | 
             | Clearly he's content releasing the software for free. Let
             | me guess, you're going to complain that the free market
             | "forced" him to work without pay?
        
               | rvz wrote:
               | > That's a bad-faith dilemma, you know it.
               | 
               | No it isn't, it is the reality. It's perfectly fine for
               | you to say you don't pay for your tools, but don't be
               | surprised to see them funded by VCs instead of donations
               | from multiple backers if it is useful enough.
               | 
               | > The users can want to see it maintained without
               | necessarily having the money, userbase or motivation to
               | sponsor the lead dev. It's not criminal to have a tight
               | pocketbook, and that's why free devtools succeed while
               | paid ones rot. There will be always be a FOSS version of
               | Herdr, and thanks to vibe coding it will probably retain
               | feature parity with the paid version.
               | 
               | You understand _both_ can rot without enough donations  /
               | backers? There are _free_ (as in libre) software that has
               | tens or hundreds of backers (Mastodon, ffmpeg, curl, OBS
               | and Blender) and they are not VC backed.
               | 
               | Even when there is a FLOSS version of Herdr, it will run
               | into the same funding issues (Herdr was FLOSS software).
               | What we _do_ know is that open source maintainers do not
               | get paid enough for maintaining their projects [0] [1].
               | 
               | So the smaller but useful popular projects usually
               | running on less backers, are more likely to spin-off and
               | turn to VC funding anyway.
               | 
               | > Everyone is happier with this arrangement, you're one
               | of the only ones fulminating at the outcome.
               | 
               | Except for the lead developer / maintainer.
               | 
               | > Clearly he's content releasing the software for free.
               | Let me guess, you're going to complain that the free
               | market "forced" him to work without pay?
               | 
               | You seem to be still confused with was was "free" here.
               | He already released the software as libre software, but
               | it is the _maintenance of the software_ that is _never_
               | free. There are already examples of FLOSS software that
               | has hundreds of backers, even when it is released for $0.
               | 
               | Again, another thing HNers don't seem to understand or
               | care about.
               | 
               | [1] https://www.sonarsource.com/open-source-maintainer-
               | survey-20...
               | 
               | [0] https://assets-eu-01.kc-
               | usercontent.com/ef593040-b591-0198-9...
        
         | rovr138 wrote:
         | I actually donate to a bunch of tools I use.
        
         | LikeAnElephant wrote:
         | When I moved to herdr I specifically looked for a donate /
         | purchase button on their website and it wasn't anywhere to be
         | found (at least in a prominent location).
         | 
         | I gladly donate / pay subscriptions to software I use
         | regularly... but the company has a responsibility to make it
         | obvious on how to do so
        
       | hx8 wrote:
       | I switched from tmux to Herdr about six weeks ago. It's a great
       | bit of software, the UI is focused on switching between multiple
       | agents quickly. I run Herdr to keep my opencode instances well
       | managed, and it also works great for having a few terminals opens
       | next to your agent. I find myself keeping opencode sessions open
       | for longer like what happens with Codex and Claude code, which is
       | great if I need to revisit a context to do some follow up work.
       | I'm genuinely excited to see if the creators can bring even more
       | value to the application.
       | 
       | If you're worried about enshittification I wouldn't be. It's
       | relatively basic open source software that runs locally. A
       | perfect candidate for a fork if the base app starts degrading.
        
         | apt-apt-apt-apt wrote:
         | Honestly, how are you guys running multiple agents, presumably
         | with them all writing code?
         | 
         | I find myself to be a huge bottleneck, having to do technical
         | design and design reviews, to make sure they're actually
         | working on the right things.
         | 
         | I feel like there's not enough coding work to justify multiple
         | agents, that part doesn't take long, and then it's back to
         | design again.
        
           | frumiousirc wrote:
           | > I find myself to be a huge bottleneck, having to do
           | technical design and design reviews, to make sure they're
           | actually working on the right things.
           | 
           | I find this depends on the LLMs being used and the person
           | using them and the problems being solved.
           | 
           | Like, Fable can be sent off to do some big thing for a long
           | while and I find myself getting bored and move over to push
           | on some other thing. Or, while reading a paper I have a
           | string of follow up questions and ideas and launch them via
           | web or CLI agent. Or I bounce between multiple chores in
           | different packages, each of which is fast for an LLM and a
           | low cognitive burden for me. Then other times, something
           | needs my full, ongoing and serial attention where the LLM
           | turn is only a minor element. I'll use the brief LLM
           | interludes to get up, walk around a bit, stretch and think.
           | 
           | As for Herdr, it seems nice when I tried it a few weeks ago.
           | But, I'm surprised it is getting so much attention (kudos).
           | Like many people, I've developed more than one work-alike
           | before Herdr hit the scene. They were based on tmux which I
           | have concluded I simply detest. In the end, I made a little
           | agent hook script that speaks to Kitty terminal and that plus
           | Kitty and a stable SSH persistent connection gives 80% of
           | what I was looking for. I do still like the "control panel"
           | aspect of my past and herdr's tries. Adding that would get me
           | another 10%.
        
           | bitmasher9 wrote:
           | > presumably with them all writing code?
           | 
           | Not always. In fact, I use multiple agents when writing my
           | technical design docs and giving feedback to design reviews.
           | 
           | The amount of time I spend writing a design doc and the
           | amount of details I can include in the paper is greatly
           | improved.
           | 
           | Ask it questions about your code base, such as if all of your
           | data base indexes are being utilized or if you can remove
           | them.
           | 
           | Ask it questions about logs, like how many api calls are made
           | to a serve every day.
           | 
           | Ask it questions about your environment, like how robust your
           | downstream is.
        
         | mickaelkerjean wrote:
         | What made you prefer it to tmux? Looking at their demo, they
         | put a lot of emphasis on the workspace like feature which tmux
         | already got with sessions. Not sure what is the point of all
         | those new tui runtime, tried a few but always got back to tmux,
         | what am I missing?
        
           | exitb wrote:
           | What you're missing is the status updates. Herdr applies
           | pattern recognition to detect the status of an agent running
           | inside, so you get updates on all your agent threads at a
           | glance.
        
             | bitmasher9 wrote:
             | Status updates aren't a big deal when running cheap&fast
             | models, but are a big deal once you start making asks that
             | take 5min+.
        
       | asadm wrote:
       | I am guessing this now directly competes with mitchellh's
       | multiplexer / Superlogical.
        
         | SJMG wrote:
         | I just wouldn't bet against Mitchell. He doesn't need the
         | money. He does it for the love of it.
        
           | trymas wrote:
           | Though what I genuinely don't understand is, why then Mitchel
           | needs funding? If he needs funding - why accept it from weird
           | contraversial figures?
           | 
           | He has the freedom of choice, like no other.
        
             | nlitened wrote:
             | What are some examples of uncontroversial figures who would
             | be willing to offer funding, in your opinion?
        
               | trymas wrote:
               | Why not Mitchel himself? Without anyone else.
               | 
               | Seeding superlogical wouldn't make a dent to his "10
               | digit bank account". Probably not much more expensive
               | than airplane hobby.
        
       | kar1181 wrote:
       | Oh man - herdr is great. This will not be net good. Sigh.
        
       | tyleo wrote:
       | Tbh it doesn't bother me entirely. I love this tool so much I'd
       | pay for it.
       | 
       | VC funding can enshitify things but it can also improve them.
       | Here's hoping for the latter.
        
       | user- wrote:
       | Congrats to Can! I am using Herdr and i think its a great tool. A
       | modern solo dev success story , very inspirational.
       | 
       | I see some negative comments here that I could understand why
       | funding scares them when it comes to their open source tool but
       | like.. atleast congratulate the guy.
        
         | Johnny_Bonk wrote:
         | Yeah I was using cmux but it was Mac only and now I run herdr
         | on my wsl and tunnel in from Mac and it's awesome that it just
         | mirrors everything. I like it and congrats to the founder
        
       | ahmadyan wrote:
       | Congrats to Can on the pre-seed funding. genuinely wishing you
       | all the best.
       | 
       | The terminal multiplexer / multi-agent coding space is getting
       | very crowded. YC alone has funded many competing startups in this
       | space: herdr, Superset, cmux, Emdash, Orca, Bullet, Conductor
       | (Conductor was in YC before pivoting from chat->coding). I'm
       | probably missing a few, and that's before counting companies
       | outside YC such as Superlogical and Agentastic.dev (by yours
       | truly).
       | 
       | One thing I find particularly interesting is the role of open
       | source in this market.
       | 
       | A lot of these products started open source (i assume as a
       | tactical way to gain traction and build a community). But after
       | the early traction phase or raise funding, the incentives seem to
       | change.
       | 
       | Being open source by itself is not a product differentiator in
       | this market. The features required for string positioning
       | (orchestration, cloud, custom agents, enterprise features, hosted
       | infrastructure, etc.) often end up either closed source or
       | available only through the hosted product.
       | 
       | That makes me wonder how much developers actually value OSS for
       | this category. How much does it matter to you whether your IDE or
       | coding environment is open source?
       | 
       | Is OSS important because you want to inspect the code, fork it,
       | self-host it, avoid vendor lock-in, or simply because you trust
       | open-source developer tools more? Or, for desktop software like
       | IDEs is open source mostly a nice-to-have rather than a
       | requirement? So I'm curious where HN lands on this
        
         | conartist6 wrote:
         | There exist also competitors not funded by YC, like me. I won't
         | be on any of the lists because I'm not courting agents, I'm
         | courting humans.
         | 
         | For me OSS is a weapon to be wielded. By making _perfect_
         | software that cannot be improved upon, and making known my
         | ownership of it, I 'm am defending "embrace extend extinguish"
         | attacks that would otherwise be damaging to me. Those attacks
         | rely on being able to undercut a product's position in the
         | market with a similarly positioned product that can be just
         | slightly better and/or cheaper.
        
         | sharts wrote:
         | Indeed and once the funding comes in with more chefs in the
         | kitchen the startups start losing touch and focus on funneling
         | users to a platform instead of just improving the core product.
        
         | giodamelio wrote:
         | It's super important to me. I use Herdr every day and I
         | maintain a whole stack of changes. From minor comfort tweaks
         | that are just preference, to several larger changes like add jj
         | workspace support and a WIP web based view (powered by
         | xterm.js).
         | 
         | This is not the only project like this too. Many of my devtools
         | are piling up changes. I try to upstream changes where it makes
         | sense, but many times they are either very bespoke, or I can't
         | be bothered to do them "right" (for example for the jj
         | workspace change, I just ripped out git support, so I didn't
         | have to futz with syncing the symantics up between the two and
         | config and whatnot).
         | 
         | LLMs have made making personal changes to devtools so
         | effortless that I am now extremely hesitant to use any non
         | source available software at all.
         | 
         | I have been thinking about a possibly expanded market for
         | source available software. I don't really care what the license
         | of the software is, I'm not sharing it at all or using it
         | commercially, so it's kinda a moot point. If someone made some
         | amazing software and sold the source I'd definitely consider
         | it. I know there are all sorts of practical business problems
         | with that, but that aside I'm curious if others feel the same?
        
           | skinfaxi wrote:
           | > LLMs have made making personal changes to devtools so
           | effortless that I am now extremely hesitant to use any non
           | source available software at all
           | 
           | This mirrors my view so totally it's crazy. If AI is ushering
           | in the era of personal tooling, closing the harness is
           | orthogonal to what users want.
        
             | vidarh wrote:
             | I also don't think closed source is going to work for any
             | software where you can't aggressively prevent the user from
             | introspecting a large chunk of the software, because it's
             | so easy to point an agent at the tool and tell it to copy
             | the functionality you actually care about and/or wrap it.
        
             | NoDodgeQuestion wrote:
             | that is not what orthogonal means
        
               | skinfaxi wrote:
               | THanks! English is not my first language.
        
               | anaisbetts wrote:
               | "closing the harness is antiparallel to what users want."
        
           | soulbadguy wrote:
           | > like add jj workspace support
           | 
           | care to share a pr :)
        
             | giodamelio wrote:
             | It's not anywhere near making PR ready (and never will be)
             | but here is the branch [1]. I make no promises on it's
             | functionality, and I only periodically rebase Herdr's
             | latest over it. I have been using the jj change for awhile
             | though with no issues. So YMMV.
             | 
             | You can also see the combined output of all my changes at
             | [2], which Jujutsu makes so damn easy via megamerges.
             | 
             | 1: https://github.com/giodamelio/herdr/tree/jj-workspace-
             | migrat...
             | 
             | 2: https://github.com/giodamelio/herdr/tree/combined-branch
        
           | ahmadyan wrote:
           | i see your point, in that light what herdr is doing here make
           | sense. keep some part open (e.g. runtime or whatever that
           | means, or the front-end, or the user-facing logic, etc) and
           | move the business-logic/etc to proprietary. So you get to
           | customize the software to meet your needs, and at the same
           | time to create some revenue incentive to grow the company.
           | 
           | alternative is to collect/sell usage data, which is icky, or
           | provide something as a service (token usage, infra, plugins,
           | etc)
        
             | giodamelio wrote:
             | Ya, I'm not sure even that would be enough though to be
             | honest.
             | 
             | I am kinda imagining a structure for a theoretical dev
             | tooling business that might be OSS Core, and Source
             | Available additional features. I'm not sure if there is a
             | generally accepted definition of Source Available, but I
             | don't necessarily mean that the source is just out in
             | public on the web. It could be sent to you when you
             | purchase the product, and could maybe even be sold on an
             | upgrade sort of model, where you pay again for the next
             | "big version" of the software, like the good old days of
             | desktop software.
        
         | foltik wrote:
         | I avoid closed source software because it's often a pain to use
         | on Linux.
        
         | miki123211 wrote:
         | In practice, I suspect the entire category will be folded into
         | Claude Code and Codex (Anthropic is already trying with Claude
         | Agents), and that will do 80% of the job at 0% of the cost and
         | configuration effort.
         | 
         | External programs will still be useful for the tiny minority
         | who wants different harnesses for different projects, but yeah,
         | tiny minority.
        
           | ahmadyan wrote:
           | in my experience, tools usually have a longer shelf-life than
           | models/labs. e.g. terminals and IDEs have been around for
           | much longer, and people tend to stick around with their
           | preferred IDEs for much longer (years/decades).
           | 
           | One bad cycle and the next Opus 6 or GPT 7 might flop (think
           | what happend to LLama4 or Gemini), and the user quickly
           | switch to the next best thing. So it make sense to build your
           | tooling to be model-agnostic.
        
         | 2001zhaozhao wrote:
         | In the case of my WIP Agent IDE, OSS is mandatory because the
         | tool needs to be able to read its own source to _improve
         | itself_.
        
         | calvinmorrison wrote:
         | frankly with the level of complexity of IDEs, I just need a
         | working product. In my mind it is closer to "photoshop" now
         | than vim. I would probably pay for VSCode. I can't believe its
         | free.
        
           | ahmadyan wrote:
           | well, visual studio isn't free. Code is free, and at some
           | point it got so good that folks didn't feel the need to pay
           | for the main suite.
        
             | calvinmorrison wrote:
             | well thats on point for microsoft branding
        
         | devin wrote:
         | They will all fail unless they're acquired, which is its own
         | kind of failure.
        
         | bgnm2000 wrote:
         | I'm the founder of scape.work - and it's precisely why we're
         | not free, not open source. I want to build something with a
         | mission of helping people own their infrastructure around AI
         | tooling locally. If I raise money I am legally bound to my
         | shareholders to create value, as opposed to my customers and my
         | mission. Bootstrapping has never made more sense, when code is
         | so cheap.
        
         | devmor wrote:
         | For me, Open Source is extremely important because the tools
         | are rapidly changing, and for reasons unrelated to my
         | productivity. I use Copilot CLI at work, but now have a daemon
         | that monitors it for updates and monkeypatches in my own custom
         | hook framework.
         | 
         | This came about after 3 separate incidents where I went to use
         | the harness and found it now provided a degraded experience
         | because Microsoft unanimously decided to change some part of it
         | without my consent.
         | 
         | I am a staunch believer that the most important thing a tool
         | can do, other than its job, is provide a static experience
         | until the user opts to change it. I use AI like a tool, because
         | it is. I need it to behave the way I expect, or it's not
         | actually useful to me.
        
         | dbbk wrote:
         | There is no business model here. This is a terrible outcome.
        
         | athrowaway3z wrote:
         | > Is OSS important because you want to inspect the code, fork
         | it, self-host it, avoid vendor lock-in, or simply because you
         | trust open-source developer tools more? Or, for desktop
         | software like IDEs is open source mostly a nice-to-have rather
         | than a requirement? So I'm curious where HN lands on this
         | 
         | I frankly do not understand the question, and it reads like one
         | you'd find in a survey written by somebody who does not
         | understand the question themselves.
         | 
         | I do not need to preach to the choir, so I will use an awkward
         | analogy for the people treating this like a survey:
         | 
         | OSS is like cash, and closed source is investing in PE (and in
         | this case historically very underwhelming returns).
         | 
         | Cash gives opportunity in every dimension you mention,
         | including the option to jump into a PE. There is no need to
         | worry or monitor its value beyond depreciation.
         | 
         | OSS provides me every opportunity I want, at no recurring
         | overhead costs, and only drawing on my attention when I want
         | it.
         | 
         | Beyond that: buying into an ecosystem has a network-effect
         | value, and the ability for any 1 person to add value to the
         | ecosystem is dependent by how easy it is to add value to it -
         | and here OSS has some natural pros.
         | 
         | But i do not think these things matter. These are
         | considerations for people looking to build near the edge of
         | whats possible, and those are a niche. If you're looking for
         | what you can sell, for any problem there are several orders of
         | magnitude more people that dont know whats already possible and
         | just want things made 'easy'.
        
         | Aeolun wrote:
         | It doesn't matter to me because all the stuff I use now is open
         | source built by me. Whether or not it goes closed source is
         | entirely up to me.
         | 
         | I am however quite annoyed by these "open source until it gets
         | popular enough" schemes. But then again, it's never happened to
         | me.
        
       | kristjansson wrote:
       | As a relatively recent herdr user, I'll say (1) congratulations
       | and (2) the thing that was most attractive was the seeming
       | orthogonality of the tool. It sits apart, interfaces with
       | subordinate programs in a few clearly delineated ways, and
       | integrates them only as much as the user desires. Critically, "no
       | integration just show me the terminal output of my program" is an
       | option, and a useful one!
       | 
       | I appreciate that discipline and respect for your user in the
       | current tool, and hope to be a paying customer of a similarly
       | values-aligned business you'll build on top of it!
        
       | vehemenz wrote:
       | I've been using Herdr for a while now, but I'd like a multiplexer
       | that's also a meta-harness that I can connect to remotely. I know
       | others have setups that work, I just haven't quite figured it out
       | yet.
        
         | asadm wrote:
         | i just ssh to my machine (from phone etc) and run `herdr` to
         | resume.
        
         | threecheese wrote:
         | Moshi has an integration with Herdr; you can connect to your
         | herdr sessions over mosh, your touches register as mouse clicks
         | in the UI (which is minimally rendered above the shell), and
         | there's a shortcut bar which can issue herdr-keymapped
         | commands.
         | 
         | It's not open source, and costs a few bucks, but it works well
         | and has live Claude/Codex/etc notifications if you are willing
         | to install a hook daemon on your hosts with homebrew. I was
         | looking for batteries-included "code from my iPhone" after
         | trying a bunch of self-hosted stuff, now I connect to my Macs
         | over Tailscale and get dropped right into multiplexer sessions
         | with rich status notifications.
         | 
         | https://getmoshi.app/
        
           | bardsore wrote:
           | I tried Moshi. Some things I did not like - Despite the name,
           | using mosh is a paid feature - It was not clear what is and
           | isn't a paid feature when using the app for the first time
           | (after selecting which server to connect to, when you select
           | which terminal/chat to connect to there's initially a counter
           | that says 20/20 which decreases every time you connect) - If
           | you pair your phone to the server for push notifications a
           | bunch of info regarding the chat is sent to their servers to
           | produce the push (naturally), this makes it unsuitable for me
           | at my job at least. IMO it would be sufficient to just get a
           | "Agent needs your attention" push.
           | 
           | All in all, I did not find it worth it compared to using mosh
           | or SSH in Termux. I have a colleague who loves Moshi though,
           | for him its perfect. Among other things he likes the
           | dictation.
        
         | durdn wrote:
         | My same line of thinking and apparently of several others,
         | turns out herdr has a plug-in for this:
         | https://github.com/nikok6/herdr-mirror which is close to what I
         | need.
        
         | kkapelon wrote:
         | Simplest setup would be just plain ssh/mosh. Nothing more
         | exotic.
         | 
         | I have seen moshi.app but haven't tested it yet.
        
       | Gooblebrai wrote:
       | I thought the A2A protocol from Google would solve this of our
       | personal agents speaking with company agents
        
         | htrp wrote:
         | 90% certain A2A is dead....
        
       | Waterluvian wrote:
       | I haven't seen one of those classic Herdr/Herdly tech names in a
       | while now.
        
       | foxtrot8672 wrote:
       | could just host it on the cloud?
        
       | lonesword wrote:
       | Congratulations! I came across herdr a few weeks ago and I've
       | been daily driving it ever since. I've tried a few other tools
       | like Emdash and Superset but Herdr is the only one that did a
       | decent job rendering Claude code UI and didn't randomly crash and
       | could run on a remote server.
        
       | ernsheong wrote:
       | Ironically a lot of YC hate despite the fact that we are
       | literally in their forum.
        
         | xyzsparetimexyz wrote:
         | Like the articles, hate the influence of VC on open source.
         | Even if it stays open it still gets ruined. See Bun for an
         | example.
        
           | rwz wrote:
           | I don't see how Bun is "ruined". In fact, I personally see
           | Bun as example of the opposite -- Rust rewrite seems like a
           | huge success across the board.
           | 
           | I'm personally using the 1.4 canary (the rust rewrite
           | version) and definitely plan on continuing using it in my
           | future projects.
        
         | loveparade wrote:
         | I don't think it's about YC specifically, more about VC-driven
         | enshittification of open source software in general.
        
       | jdorfman wrote:
       | Congrats Can. Love your product, it has become the default way to
       | orchestrate agents in my terminal.
        
       | loveparade wrote:
       | Oh no, I was using it. What's a good replacement? Guess I'll go
       | back to tmux.
        
         | yoyohello13 wrote:
         | I'm a fan of zellij
        
       | Taek wrote:
       | This title is killing me. "The runtime stays open" is such a
       | heavy, attention grabbing sentence, it's all I can stare at on
       | the front page. It's the type of writing that makes me hate
       | working with LLMs, because it's so powerful at monopolizing my
       | attention, and makes it difficult for me to focus on any of the
       | other words on the page (whether the front page, or the comments
       | page).
        
         | moomoo11 wrote:
         | it's ok Claude we can see you
        
         | yoyohello13 wrote:
         | You should read the Herdr front page. Is so full of AIism it
         | hurts my head.
        
         | joegibbs wrote:
         | "The noun verbs." is such an incredibly Claudeish sentence. The
         | other models don't do that stuff. I'd say it's actually biggest
         | tell for Claude writing.
        
       | behole wrote:
       | Congrats on momentum! Well earned. Love Herdr.
        
       | abofh wrote:
       | You've joined an accelerator, not gone public, of course you're
       | not ready to rug pull
        
       | DonHopkins wrote:
       | If they just stayed opn they could reinvest the penultimate e in
       | calling themselves Herder.
        
       | phrmendes wrote:
       | Thanks god I didn't replace tmux
        
       | smagnuso wrote:
       | I thought I'd share that hydra recently added support for herdr
       | directly. It is an agent multiplexer of its own, but can directly
       | create herdr tabs for sessions:
       | 
       | https://github.com/smagnuso/hydra-acp
        
       | tmzt wrote:
       | A nice little asciinema demo would be helpful on the TUI page. I
       | should be able to see what it is, how it presents the contained
       | agents, etc.
       | 
       | I've been evaluating a few of these (and built one into another
       | project I was working on, almost by accident), and am mostly
       | looking for a frontend agnostic, terminal only (not harness)
       | which can submit instructions to agents one line at at time with
       | rate-limiting.
       | 
       | I was also surprised by tmux being built on shared memory when I
       | tried to route it over a vsock to a VM. One of the annoyances
       | with tmux is it's failure to forward environment changes to the
       | individual tabs (such as an option when attaching), or allow for
       | something like a ssh-agent forwarder (shouldn't be built in
       | though).
        
         | mastazi wrote:
         | in the herdr homepage near the top there is an interactive demo
         | that responds to your mouse clicks
        
       | krypttr wrote:
       | Can anyone tell me how is this different than tmux?
        
         | mcintyre1994 wrote:
         | Mostly it's the agents view, it'll show the status of and let
         | you quickly jump to all the agents you have running in any
         | pane/tab.
         | 
         | It also has a default config that's much easier to use than
         | tmux, letting you use the mouse or simpler (IMO) keyboard
         | shortcuts
         | 
         | Built in worktrees are nice too.
        
           | krypttr wrote:
           | I guess I have to download and try. It does not sound too
           | exciting to me.
        
             | mcintyre1994 wrote:
             | It also might just not be much use for you, especially if
             | you've been using tmux for a long time and have a set up
             | you like.
        
         | kkapelon wrote:
         | https://herdr.dev/compare/
        
       | porker wrote:
       | herdr users (and all the other terminal multiplexer users): what
       | am I missing?
       | 
       | I use cmux because I like tabbed terminals on macOS grouped by
       | project, saves messing with our daft window management.
       | 
       | What is it that makes herdr et al so popular with LLM users?
        
         | Oras wrote:
         | I loved using cmux for several weeks until I saw the ram usage.
        
           | lawrencechen wrote:
           | Totally fair, maker of cmux here. We fixed many RAM usage
           | issues (latest version is 0.64.22), and also added an
           | activity monitor to see how much RAM/CPU coding agents are
           | taking.
           | 
           | My cmux has been running with 136 workspaces and 218
           | terminals, and has been hovering around 5.7 GB. Granted, the
           | theoretical RAM minimum for this number of terminals is
           | around 1-1.5 GB before real scrollback, so we definitely have
           | more work to do.
        
             | Oras wrote:
             | Thanks, good to know. I installed the update and will check
             | it out again.
             | 
             | If it helps, the main reason I love cmux is how can I
             | manage my projects into folders, I have fast access to all
             | the projects which made my life a lot easier working in the
             | terminal. I can also have coding, test, monitoring spilt in
             | one tab per project.
        
         | kkapelon wrote:
         | https://herdr.dev/compare/
        
           | porker wrote:
           | It answers the "What" but not the "Why?"
        
             | kkapelon wrote:
             | Not sure I understand your question. You literally asked,
             | "WHAT is it that makes herdr et al so popular"?
             | 
             | Why? Because it has more/better features. Or you mean
             | something else?
             | 
             | Specifically against cmux, it is not Macosonly. So you can
             | run it directly on a linux server and then ssh/mosh from
             | anywhere.
        
               | porker wrote:
               | > Why? Because it has more/better features. Or you mean
               | something else?
               | 
               | I mean something else. Zoom out, why do people need, or
               | want, a tool like herdr?
               | 
               | What has led people to this point? Is it because they
               | need terminal multiplexing to spawn agents, instead of
               | using built-in subagents? Do they like cute sheep icons?
               | What made having multiple terminals open unappealing? Is
               | it the built-in alerting when attention is needed? Is it
               | only applicable to people running their agents on remote
               | machines?
               | 
               | When I look at these kinds of tools, that is the question
               | I can't answer because I suspect I haven't run into the
               | pain points they address yet, despite running multiple
               | LLM sessions in multiple projects simultaneously.
        
               | kkapelon wrote:
               | Strictly from personal opinion
               | 
               | 1) Built-in sub agents assume you use a single AI agent.
               | Some people use multiple, so they need separate
               | terminals/processes by definition. Even if you use the
               | same agent sometimes you have different security
               | boundaries. Think also the needs for a consultant working
               | with many customers at once.
               | 
               | 2)Multiple-open terminals. When that number passes 5-7
               | for me, then yes I don't like clicking on each one of
               | those manually to see where my attention is needed. Herdr
               | (and similar tools) show exactly what is working and what
               | stalled.
               | 
               | 3) No I use herdr locally mostly right now. But since it
               | is just ssh I like the fact that you can run it from
               | anywhere. I haven't done it yet, but I imagine you could
               | open a herdr session from a steamdeck to a remote server
               | to debug somthing
               | 
               | Another thing I like on herdr is easy work trees. Sure
               | you can do it manually with git commands, or ask the
               | agent itself to use a new worktree, but just having
               | workrees with a single click and a visual tree/children
               | hierarchy was the killer feature for making me look at
               | herdr at the first place.
               | 
               | Yes technically you can do the same thing with just many
               | terminals and custom scripts. But it is the same question
               | of why Dropbox sells when you could do the same thing
               | with cvs/ftp :-)
        
       | khalic wrote:
       | Congrats to the herdr team! Please don't abandon the open source
       | part of the business when the cash starts flowing... every open
       | source project that does a bait'n'switch is a stab at the
       | viability of open source as a whole
        
       | gitowiec wrote:
       | What's the purpose of this project? Only to close the lid and let
       | agent work in the background? Really that's what I found useful
       | on project's homepage
        
         | ubercore wrote:
         | I dropped it in to replace zellij, and get better agent
         | integration in the process.
        
       | hrishikesh-s wrote:
       | I only heard about Herdr recently and was pleasantly surprised
       | that I had invented the same thing 6 months ago as an emacs
       | package called Magnus :)
        
       | la_fayette wrote:
       | I started using Herdr and I really like it. Since the main
       | features I wanted are already there, I have no issue with the
       | commercialization. I still wonder how this can be turned into a
       | profitable business. It'll be really interesting to follow
       | Herdr's future. All the best to the founder!
        
       | level87 wrote:
       | I've tried Herdr a couple of times, and just can't get into it. I
       | think what's off putting is another layer of keyboard shortcuts
       | over my terminal...I don't see what it's doing that Wezterm and a
       | bunch of splits does anyway? I'm almost certainly missing the
       | point.
        
         | SkyArrow wrote:
         | For me, herdr's benefits over terminal splits are:
         | 
         | 1. Surfacing agents which are ready for further input
         | 
         | 2. Letting you jump quickly to said agents
         | 
         | 3. SSH session persistence, as I work on a beefy devbox at
         | work. tmux also offers this.
         | 
         | I often need to juggle several streams of work at $job in
         | parallel - such are the expectations.
         | 
         | Like you though, I'd much prefer to use my terminal directly
         | with the indirection of an additional multiplexer like herdr or
         | tmux - lower latency, easier scrollback & copying.
         | 
         | Session persistence can be solved by zmx [1].
         | 
         | Points 1 and 2 however are concerned with tracking the state of
         | and navigating to parallel agents. I'm thinking about creating
         | a TUI or SwiftUI app to handle those points in the way I like,
         | but the challenge of integrating such an app with zmx and kitty
         | to jump to the right panes both locally and over a devbox is a
         | little daunting. Plus, I've found my devbox doesn't play too
         | well with `ControlMaster auto` SSH config suggested by the zmx
         | docs.
         | 
         | [1] https://github.com/neurosnap/zmx
        
       | leoc wrote:
       | So I won't have switch to Fchte or Schlirmchr?
        
       | DrStartup wrote:
       | that sucks, time to look for a new one
        
       | gaiagraphia wrote:
       | Spooky. Just set it up last night after ragequitting my own
       | attempt.
       | 
       | Good luck!
        
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       (page generated 2026-08-07 14:00 UTC)