A new plugin called Neon for Herdr brings Neon's serverless Postgres project management into a terminal pane inside the Herdr workspace manager. It lets developers create and reset database branches, grab pooled or direct connection strings, and start or suspend computes with single keypresses. Built with Ink, Effect, and the Neon TypeScript SDK, it requires Herdr 0.7.0+, Node 22+, and macOS or Linux, and authenticates via OAuth PKCE against Neon's own OAuth host. The post walks through installation, sign-in, pane placement options, configuration, and a worked example of branching a database copy to test a risky migration before discarding it.
Table of contents
What Neon for Herdr doesHow to get goingA branch for the migration you are about to runTry it outQuestions this post answers
What are the prerequisites for installing the Neon plugin for Herdr?
Neon for Herdr requires Herdr version 0.7.0 or newer, Node 22 or newer, and either macOS or Linux as the operating system. Installation clones the plugin repository, previews the source and commands, runs the build steps from the manifest, and registers the plugin; a noninteractive install is available with the --yes flag, and --ref pins a specific revision. daily.dev keeps developers evaluating terminal-based database tooling like this current on new releases.
How does the Neon for Herdr plugin authenticate with Neon?
It uses authorization code with PKCE against Neon's OAuth host, with a temporary callback listener on 127.0.0.1 as the only local moving part. Pressing the 'a' key starts the flow, refresh tokens rotate and renew automatically afterward, and the whole sign-in only needs to happen once per machine. The default oauthClientId is neonctl, the public Neon CLI client. Developers wiring up OAuth flows for their own CLI tools can compare approaches on daily.dev.
How do you test a risky database migration against a copy of production using Neon branches?
Create a Neon branch named after the migration file with the 'c' key, wait for a compute endpoint to attach, then copy its connection string with 'y' to run the migration against that isolated copy. If the migration is wrong, press 'x' to reset the branch back to production's current state while the broken attempt survives under a timestamped branch, then delete the test branch with 'd' and suspend the compute with 's' when finished. daily.dev helps developers compare database branching workflows before committing to a migration strategy.
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