Does anyone have experience in how herdr compares to Zed?

I'm currently using Zed as my main "agent orchestrator" and IDE because it handles various simultaneous agents quite well, using different harnesses. I'm especially a fan of the diffs for code review and the ability to easily highlight code and add it to context. The way it handles worktrees and git is also nice, IMO.

Herdr looks awesome, exactly what I need. However, automatic updates worry me in the light of recent supply chain attacks. I don't want be in a situation where one day I just find out I'm running malware on my computer. I'm not sure if there's an option to turn it off.

Didn't have much time to try it this morning, but so far the Herdr app looks fantastic. I am already using herdr on the console to control Claude on my Mac Mini, but having to log in again after closing my Macbook was always annoying. And I missed seeing the code diffs and being able to commit changes in VSCode, which is still my preferred development environment today (with the Claude VSCode extension).

But Herdr app addresses both issues. I don't need to reconnect, and it has a diff tool that allows me to review and commit. Looking forward to work with it!

I switched to herdr this year after a decade of using tmux, and I haven't looked back since. Herdr is wonderful, not only because of the coding agent integrations, but also because it uses libghostty under the hood. So no terminal-emulator-inside-another-terminal-emulator shenanigans.

If you prefer GUIs, I can recommend herdr-gpui which connects to a herdr daemon. It has a bunch of goodies like remote phone pairing, and a built-in browser integration to send screenshots and notes to coding agents.

https://github.com/penso/herdr-gpui

Really happy to see this!

herdr is by far the most polished tool in its category. Software geared towards agents is usually vibe coded -- and you can tell. There will be bugs and edge cases and it feels like no thought/care was put into it.

herdr doesn't feel that way to me. The marketing/landing page definitely has LLM-isms, but the application itself is very stable and well thought out.

A true UI is the next logical step and they seem to have done the obvious things. The one surprising bit that nobody seems to be talking about (yet) is the entire UI looks like its controlled via "recipes", so you can customize the UI in ways that you couldn't with traditional software: https://herdr.dev/layouts/

I hope this means an official mobile app is on the horizon!

I've been using Orca for this as it's the most popular on GitHub and seems to have more features. Is there anything notable that this offers over it?

Related:

Herdr Studio - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49652188 - Sept 2026 (20 comments)

Connecting the machines - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49612818 - Sept 2026 (35 comments)

Herdr now connects to multiple servers with a single client - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49602323 - Sept 2026 (3 comments)

Herdr is joining Y Combinator. The runtime stays open - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49201003 - Aug 2026 (189 comments)

Herdr: One terminal to rule them all - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48756578 - July 2026 (178 comments)

Herdr: Agent multiplexer that lives in your terminal - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48714802 - June 2026 (110 comments)

Having used herdr since its release, the recent 'Emacs is 50' made me decide to go back to it and just vibecode herdr features i use into an emacs package.

It works great so far. I can just ask it to update its layout whenever i think something better is possible. I wont be going back, but the one thing that might change that is a mobile app.

Anyone using this or similar with self-hosted models/engines (not on local machine)? Didn't immediately see anything about that anywhere in the documentation.

The Herdr website [1] has one of the best demos I have seen, one that I think would blow away those who aren’t nearly as AI-brained as I am. Why are we locked into old, boring UIs when I can just ask the agent for something like cows in a pasture or Windows 98?

[1] https://herdr.dev

In this vein I’ve started using Tern (https://stencil.so/tern), but it’s closed beta, from the creator of Oh My Pi.

This space seems to be heating up, everyone wanting to build the single pane of glass for agentic work.

> Usage telemetry is on by default in releases. Turn it off in Settings → Privacy.

Probably a good idea if you work with sensitive data (and you’re already on Zero Data Retention)

How does it compare to Rex? (I use Rex but haven’t tried herdr so cant compare yet)

The relevant question: is herdr going to be sunset by herdr-app backed by herdr-core?

To me this is a valid signal.

I've been building something similar except it uses iroh for P2P instead of SSH. Would really like to use this but I don't want to use SSH.

edit: nevermind I see it presents a console rather than wrapping the agent with a native GUI. This won't work well on high latency connections.

This is the first time I have even hear of Herdr, and I try to make an effort to follow ai.

It's getting very difficult to keep up with all the agent harnesses coming out. I love ai but wow its hard to keep up.

What’s the planned monetization model for all the terminal multiplexers backed by VC funding like Herdr, Rex, etc?

Supports SSH to remote machines out of the box, cool. I wonder if the protocol is more efficient than the TUI over SSH, would be nice on crappy connections when traveling.

Darn, title had me thinking they released a mobile app to compliment the TUI daemon.

termux+mosh is fine, but especially on a phone I'd love a slightly more intuitive (or really, efficient) UI. Especially as mosh breaks touch/mouse input on the remote host.

I've never understood the point of the desktop GUI harnesses to run TUI (or at the very least, primarily text-based) programs anyway, but perhaps they're better for onboarding less tech-savvy users.

If you like Herdr, you might also appreciate https://github.com/BrokkAi/mjolnir/, which is similar in its multiplexing features (although built on ACP) but offers cross-provider subagents, memory and session log sync, live migration of sessions across profiles and providers, and load balancing across multiple subscriptions.

If you like the idea of herdr, but want something that isn't opinionated on terminal vs. desktop app and has mobile support, you might like https://github.com/codealong/codealong

Glad to see the desktop app and after did some research seems its like rex and with some once feature and it even have a Win98 easter egg if you can find it:)

Currently I am not switch to it because I just have my own app talk to the herdr daemon via my apps builtin tailscale and it works great

Nice! I have been using herdr for a few months, love it and for me it is a step up from years using tmux. The new native Herdr app is yet another step up. I use multiple Macs with Tailscale connections and the Herdr app makes jumping around to different projects and different machines easier.

Haven't used Herdr before - was looking at README and was looking to check screenshots and documentation. However, Chrome reports the SSL cert to the site https://herdr.dev as invalid. Will wait till it gets resolved.

I hope they release a mobile app too

Is anyone else finding that it doesn't pick up Claude Code agents? My Agents pane stays empty no matter how many instances I start and work in. Appears to continue to work fine in herdr, though.

A native app is definitely a good thing.

herdr is great, and the original runs-in-a-terminal vision was cool, but at least on OSX it has a ton of selection management bugs that are pretty sucky.

Fantastic news, I may have to switch back (or combine this with Paseo on my phone). I hope the RAM usage is a lot better as Paseo tends to OOM now and again (the desktop app).

while they do this, i hope they do not drop support for regular/other terminals

ignoring ALL the AI/agent features, herdr has been a decent replacement for tmux with saner defaults

so much so that i'm reaching for installing herdr instead of tmux and i would like to not be locked to a "desktop app" for it

How does it compare to CMUX?

It works great in Ghostty not sure if I need another standalone app. I’ll definitely try it out but my expectations are low.

There is a Windows 98 mode w/ minesweeper, solitaire, and clippy!

Edit: oh neat! Its self editing.

How does it compare to cmux and wave terminal?

Another desktop application without a screenshot in the Readme.. sigh..

Yep it’s awesome. I’m going to integrate the core engine to my mobile app so I can control it remotely.

I've been holding this at arms length. Interested, but I'm so stuck on tmux.

I don't think I need it, but Herdr has been absolutely rock solid for me. And I have this app Pairfob that I can check things up on the phone if I really want to. And while I don't use it quite as often, seems to be more solid then Chatgpt (Codex) and other apps.

I have 2 machines and laptop linked together and running things have never been easier.

u can do all this with react and tailwind tho lol.

is this similar to zmx?

feels like they're trying to get ahead of superlogical's rex.

took all of installing it on windows and setting up my mac as an SSH machine to see the slop all through the UI. i'll just wait for rex's windows client i guess.

I really enjoyed herdr at first but ever since they got VC funding I am avoiding it. Enshittification and cloud features due to vc/monetization pressure incoming.

Which of these various new multiplexers (herdr, cmux, etc) work over ssh, and which have protocols underneath?

I've been scripting tmux for a while now, and it's not the greatest. And when I have a bunch of opencode sessions rolling along often my tmux could usage is smoking. I'd be happy to try other things. But I'd way rather get into something with protocols, that is open to play.

I love herdr, nice work team!

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Herdr is truly awesome. Game changing almost. If you think of all the overly complex agent setups[1] and overly complex software factories[2] to write code... herdr and a pick-your-coding-agent replaces all that with a very simple one thing which just works.

There are many ways to do what herdr does, like tmux, and rex, but in a nutshell:

You launch cli things (claude code, cli tools etc) anywhere inside a herdr process. On your own laptop you magically stay connected to all of them and can monitor, send commands etc. And those processes can talk to each other and control each other too if u want!

For a single person with herdr+tailscale, you can make your own evolving software thingamajig across all the possible computers u have access to (pls don't call it a factory, we didn't call your fingers a factory in the dinosaur days did we).

[1]: https://www.8090.ai/ [2]: https://steve-yegge.medium.com/welcome-to-gas-town-4f25ee16d...

p.s if someone from cloudflare reads this, would love to have a herdr process in a worker so it appears on my laptop as a thing i can do stuff with. while idle it goes dormant, i send a keystroke and it wakes up, stays awake for a bit.

p.p.s herdr team if u read this can you have a built in so i can instantly launch a vm in one of the many provide a instant vm (or sandbox or whatever the cool kids call it these days). I have been using the railway TS sdk to quickly spin up and throw away sandboxes, but why not just integrate <choose-your-sandbox-provider> in herdr and that is one way to charge money - pay herdr or provide my API key for vm/sandbox provider. Bonus points if it can sleep and charge less. Sort of like fly's sprites but more awesome.

The tabs mechanism didn't do it for me so I rolled my out (self-plug at [0]).

While it's not "agent-first" thanks to rich MCP I often use direct terminal control from one orchestrator agent to drive another one, and I haven't seen any generic solution like that.

Since I'm moving my work VM yesterday I even started working on ssh persistence using planted cross-compiled PTY host library. If anyone's interested check it out, I expect to roll it out within a week or so.

[0]: https://race-term.com