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Herdr: One terminal to rule them all

herdr.dev

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Re: Herdr: One terminal to rule them all

#91
post #52
post #8

So I've tried to figure out why you might want to use this over Tmux, and essentially I think it comes to down to: - everything is mouse clickable - tmux style display-popups are used for friendly UI interactions everywhere - it has a UI for agents running in panes, with a cool status (idle/working) display - has opinionated defaults like automatic clipboard copy on mouse text select - makes nested sessions easier &…

I wanted to mention that `zmx` is a beautiful piece of minimal software that basically has gotten rid of my tmux and zellij use. Uses a ghostty-based terminal emulator for each session, supports pretty much all of these features by leveraging ghostty. I truly don’t see the benefit of something like herdr over this minimal, robust setup. If I really wanted a lot of customization for AI assistants, I’d consider using O…

I really want to like this. Ideologically I'm on board. Who wouldn't want to avoid all this multiplexing complexity and pitfalls? But deferring the window management to the OS sounds great in theory, but in practice it falls short (at least for me).

I work on both MacOS and Linux. Even if I were to figure out a perfect window management approach, I'd have to do it twice, and then figure out a way to "attach" to a layout of windows essentially. And then make it cross-platform... or live with zero organization, or at best some kind of flat structure. That's a immediate non-starter. Even if I focused only on a single OS, I still don't consider this a viable approach. It would be like removing browser tabs, and saying let's let the OS manage all this nasty UI stuff.

So then the next immediate idea is let's just have the Terminal itself manage UI. Ghostty supports tabs, splits etc. Great. But if I need to restart Ghostty for whatever reason, my entire layout vanishes and I have to set it all up again?

For me tmux is not just about the attach/detach part. A session is a personal "layout" of the workspace I've organically landed on for this task. Maybe it's a few windows with splits. Maybe it's just the single window with or without a split. Maybe it's a more browser-like just X amount of windows (tabs). If/when things get overwhelming I branch off into a new session for one (or more) sub-tasks. Little fzf-based utilities allow for nice fuzzying over sessions and what not. Or maybe you just run the different sessions in actual different physical OS windows. You can mix and match however you feel that day.

So if I'm in project x, working on feature y, and I detach and walk over to my other computer I can SSH over and continue as if nothing at all changed and retain the exact layout of what I was using before. Simultaneously in another physical window (or a tab) I can just switch to another local (or not) session and instantly be mentally in a different context, working on a different project or feature. Or I can SSH into a server and resume a debugging session left (intentionally) open for a while (which may consist of a few splits/windows/what not).

Maybe I'm missing something. I'm curious how your day-to-day workflow looks like. I imagine if I was 100% bound to a single machine, I could make it work with a tiling wm. But even then Ghostty crashes or something else happens and poof your entire work layout is gone and needs to be re-created (even if the individual pieces are safe).

Re: Herdr: One terminal to rule them all

#92
i tried giving tmux a go but there is a period where you're kinda going in and out of a tool, maybe not coming back to it for weeks at a time, this is why imo herdr is a really good tool - it doesn't punish you for not remembering the bindings, everything is clickable and as you go you can decide which bindings to learn and commit to instinct when required. I believe all TUIs should be like this from now on. This is also what makes opencode so great/sticky. Great work herdr team, I've only used it for a few days but I know I will be using this for a long time to come.

Re: Herdr: One terminal to rule them all

#93
I get why folks use tmux/herdr, but I already use i3wm/Hyprland for window/workspace management, and want to have "shared first class windows" instead of dual binds of "super-based binds for i3 windows ... oh wait control-a based binds for tmux panes".

Has anyone got a tool/setup that is tmux-like but the remote terminals/panes are all local/native windows?

Re: Herdr: One terminal to rule them all

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious, are you using the 10 agents for personal projects or for work?

Work.

What's an example of what the 10 agents would be doing in parallel? I've never used more than 2 in parallel before.

Re: Herdr: One terminal to rule them all

#97
post #91
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wanted to mention that `zmx` is a beautiful piece of minimal software that basically has gotten rid of my tmux and zellij use. Uses a ghostty-based terminal emulator for each session, supports pretty much all of these features by leveraging ghostty. I truly don’t see the benefit of something like herdr over this minimal, robust setup. If I really wanted a lot of customization for AI assistants, I’d consider using O…

I really want to like this. Ideologically I'm on board. Who wouldn't want to avoid all this multiplexing complexity and pitfalls? But deferring the window management to the OS sounds great in theory, but in practice it falls short (at least for me). I work on both MacOS and Linux. Even if I were to figure out a perfect window management approach, I'd have to do it twice, and then figure out a way to "attach" to a lay…

Niri is a perfect window manager approach, in my opinion. I don’t need tmux. Just Niri + Foot (terminal) and it’s perfect for the way my brain works. If you haven’t tried it, I highly recommended it.

Re: Herdr: One terminal to rule them all

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Work.

What's an example of what the 10 agents would be doing in parallel? I've never used more than 2 in parallel before.

Some tasks could take a while, especially with /goal mode. At work we often have multiple agents running on different tasks, and each could spawn subagents that you may or may not want to track. With the herdr skill you can have subagents be managed via tabs or panes, which gives them more visibility and could also explode your terminal :)

Re: Herdr: One terminal to rule them all

#99
post #93

I get why folks use tmux/herdr, but I already use i3wm/Hyprland for window/workspace management, and want to have "shared first class windows" instead of dual binds of "super-based binds for i3 windows ... oh wait control-a based binds for tmux panes". Has anyone got a tool/setup that is tmux-like but the remote terminals/panes are all local/native windows?

Yeah... Herdr. Used in thin client mode connecting to remote server.

Re: Herdr: One terminal to rule them all

#100
post #21
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mobile support?

The example I saw of "mobile support" was connecting via a mobile terminal emulator. I don't see how that is any different than using tmux with the same mobile terminal emulator.

Herdr supports mobile-friendly layouts seamlessly, just like responsive web pages. On a narrow terminal, the sidebar is automatically hidden, and the tab bar is replaced with a status line (current workspace name, current tab name, and agent statuses). Everything else is tucked into the hamburger menu.
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