I don't understand herdr, can you explain it to me? I've tried it, but I don't understand what it gives me over tmux other than the agent sidebar. But people seem excited about it so I feel like I am missing something.
So an opportunity to learn the Bitter Lesson [1].
If tmux is good enough for people today, it should be good enough for agets tomorrow. That gap might comprise a beachhead. But you'd better scramble off the shores onto something more defensible fast.
[1] http://www.incompleteideas.net/IncIdeas/BitterLesson.html
Also, herdr is just an open source project with no VC capital behind it. So I don't think it needs to scramble to something more defensible. It can live a happy life pleasing users and then fade into obsolescence.
tmux is good enough for agents today. they're great at driving it, they're great at customizing it, what's the problem people have with it? i am confused.
This aged like milk!
I understand it has the agent pane on the left that tells you what is running but... that's it?
Realistically, what I use about its agent stuff is:
- reliable notification pings either via what your terminal app uses (e.g., ghostty's) or system or just within herdr only
- if absolutely necessary, be able to tell agent sessions to observe and run commands on a herdr pane (security beware, for obvious reasons)
- herdr --remote which is basically a quick SSH -> attach to herdr on a remote
- prefix+g (equivalent to prefix+w in tmux) presents itself nicer, has binds for agent state filtering and its /search imho is mildly nicer than tmux's
Arguably, you can have the same points in others if you know how to configure tmux or zellij already, so if you're comfortable with that then you really don't have to use herdr.
Herdr holds potential in stuff like their socket API ( https://herdr.dev/docs/socket-api/ ) and whatever enhancements they wish to bring (e.g., https://herdr.dev/docs/agent-automation/ ) so if that appeals to others, it's worth a shot.
But for most regular users, tmux and other multiplexers work just fine.
It’s fine.
When running many agents something like the “idle/working workstreams” gutter is honestly helpful though.
I rebuild herdr from master every few days to gauge the direction it’s moving in.
What herdr gets right over zellij:
- Default keybinds don’t conflict with helix. Even the leader key mode in zellij keeps alt-bindings around. Herdr keeps things nicely tucked away.
- There’s beta support for the kitty image protocol. Three years on, we’re still waiting in zellij.
- Notifications get passed correctly through to the terminal.
As for herdr’s killer feature, agent status monitoring, there is apparently a zellij plugin.
Big win for zellij: the docs and code feel human. By contrast, herdr’s docs have all the tells of a vibe coded project. Not to say the maintainer hasn’t put care into it! But I’m getting burned out on LLM docs.
To even get started with tmux you need to invest days to learn the keyboard commands. And yes good luck merging windows.
I can’t wait to forget all of the useless cli crap that Unix forced me to learn because nobody gave a damn about ux.