--- title: Herdr has released native app | daily.dev description: Herdr is a desktop app for managing terminals and coding agents. It organizes work into spaces with tabs and panes, and closing the window leaves terminals... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/herdr-has-released-native-app-p4ilr9j5x twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Herdr has released native app | daily.dev og:description: Herdr is a desktop app for managing terminals and coding agents. It organizes work into spaces with tabs and panes, and closing the window leaves terminals... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/herdr-has-released-native-app-p4ilr9j5x og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/P4ILR9J5x.png og:image:alt: Herdr has released native app og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Herdr has released native app **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 6 min read · 8 upvotes · 1 comments ## Summary Herdr is a desktop app for managing terminals and coding agents. It organizes work into spaces with tabs and panes, and closing the window leaves terminals running in a separate core process. An agents sidebar shows which coding agents are working, blocked, done, or idle across spaces. You can connect to remote machines over SSH, and the app's look is customizable through JavaScript 'mods' and layouts. To build from source, use Rust 1.95.0 and Zig 0.16.0. It can be installed with a shell script on Linux and macOS, or with a PowerShell script on Windows, and includes a CLI with `--skill`, `ls`, `status`, and `commands` for driving the window from agents. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### How do I install Herdr on Linux or macOS from the command line? Run `curl -fsSL https://releases.herdr.dev/app/install.sh | sh` in a terminal. The installer adds Herdr to your apps and places the command in `~/.local/bin`, which you may need to add to your PATH. macOS builds target Apple Silicon; Intel Mac users must build from source. Linux requires a desktop session and a working Vulkan driver, with x86-64 and ARM64 builds available. _daily.dev surfaces setup guides like this for developers standardizing their terminal and agent workflow._ ### What Rust and Zig versions are needed to build Herdr from source? Building Herdr from source requires Rust 1.95.0 and Zig 0.16.0, the same versions used in its CI workflow. After cloning the repository with its submodules, running `just build`, `just test`, and `just install` compiles and installs the app, with Linux installs linking back to the checkout directory. _track exact toolchain versions on daily.dev before kicking off a source build._ ### What happens to my terminal sessions when I close a terminal app window? In Herdr, closing the whole window leaves terminals running because a separate core process manages them independently of the window. Closing an individual pane or tab, however, ends its terminals. After a reboot or core crash, kept panes reopen with fresh shells in their last folders rather than restoring the previous running programs. _compare how different terminal tools handle session persistence on daily.dev._ ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 1 discussion and 94 comments across hackernews (as of 2026-10-30). **TL;DR:** Longtime tmux/Zellij users describe switching to Herdr's new native app as a smooth, polished upgrade, especially for managing multiple agents and remote machines, though VC funding, telemetry, and competition from similar tools (Rex, Tern, cmux) draw skepticism. **Sentiment:** 60% positive · 25% mixed · 15% skeptical **The case for** - Many describe it as a stable, polished replacement for tmux/Zellij with sensible defaults. - SSH support for juggling multiple remote machines is frequently praised. - The JavaScript-based UI customization ('mods'/recipes) impressed several commenters as genuinely novel. - Telemetry is reportedly limited and transparently documented with an example payload. **The pushback** - VC funding raises fears of future enshittification or paywalling of a previously free tool. - Some found the marketing site had obvious LLM-generated writing, and one called the UI itself 'slop'. - Several note confusion/competition with similar tools (Rex, Tern, cmux, Paseo) making it hard to evaluate standing out. - A couple of users report it failing to detect running Claude Code agents. - One commenter is frustrated no mobile app or screenshot in the README exists yet. **By community** - hackernews (mixed): Largely enthusiastic firsthand accounts of switching from tmux/Zellij, tempered by recurring worries about VC funding, telemetry, and whether it will outlast or outshine a crowded field of similar agent-multiplexer tools. **Hottest debate:** Whether VC backing will eventually ruin a tool people currently love for free, versus dismissing that worry as overblown. **Open questions** - What is the actual monetization plan now that Herdr has VC funding? - How does Herdr's remote/SSH performance compare to mosh-like efficient protocols on poor connections? - Will the terminal-based (non-GUI) version continue to be supported alongside the new desktop app? **Highlights** > I've been using Zellij a long time and considered using Herdr, but the VC funding aspect scares me. I don't want to invest a bunch of time in a tool that's going to treat me as a product. > — [yoyohello13 on hackernews · 3 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50299076) > 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! > — [shepherdjerred on hackernews · 3 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50299783) > 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 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. > — [77ko on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50300060) > 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. > — [loveparade on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50299611) > 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. > — [pdantix on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50299527) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50298436) · 148 points · 94 comments ## Community discussion Top comments from developers on daily.dev. **@lezli01** · 0 upvotes > I like the idea and also had something similar in mind, tho I also required more governance on the sessions and their works, so for that I created vincent: [https://lezli01.is-a.dev/vincent/latest/](https://lezli01.is-a.dev/vincent/latest/) ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [A deep dive into Herdr](https://daily.dev/posts/a-deep-dive-into-herdr-jzkwg8r1e) · Flavio Copes · 5 upvotes · 1 comments --- Tags: [#ai-agents](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-agents), [#rust](https://daily.dev/tags/rust), [#ssh](https://daily.dev/tags/ssh) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/herdr-has-released-native-app-p4ilr9j5x) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Herdr has released native app","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/herdr-has-released-native-app-p4ilr9j5x","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/herdr-has-released-native-app-p4ilr9j5x"},"datePublished":"2026-10-30T03:10:32.442Z","dateModified":"2026-10-30T07:56:38.793Z","description":"Herdr is a desktop app for managing terminals and coding agents. 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