Looking for an alternative to Herdr? Meet AgentsRoom.

Herdr is an open source runtime for coding agents: one Rust binary under the Apache 2.0 license that gives every agent a real terminal pane, detects on its own whether it is working, blocked or idle, and keeps it alive through a closed lid or a reboot. AgentsRoom answers the same problem one layer higher, as a full agentic IDE: a backlog, a diff review, specialized roles, agent teams and a mobile app.

Both tools exist because running several coding agents at once is unmanageable in a plain terminal. Herdr solves the terminal part and stops there, deliberately: it is infrastructure, and it leaves the workflow to you, your scripts and its plugins. AgentsRoom is the workflow. A ticket an agent picks up, the diff it produced, the review, the commit, a memory the whole team writes to, and a push notification on your phone when an agent needs an answer.

AgentsRoom: a visual command center for your coding agents, with backlog, roles and per-agent terminals

The difference at a glance

✗

With Herdr

-Terminal native: a TUI inside the emulator you already use, so no window, no file tree and no diff view
-Automatic agent state per pane: working, blocked or idle, across every project
-A background daemon: sessions survive a closed lid, a dropped network or a reboot
-Open source under Apache 2.0, one Rust binary, plus a socket API and a plugin marketplace
-No backlog, no roles, no code review, no model per agent: a pane stays a pane
-No graphical client and no mobile app today: the bundled TUI and SSH are the only ways in

✓

With AgentsRoom

+A real agentic IDE: agents, projects, terminals, files and diffs in a single window
+Built-in code review: side by side diffs with syntax highlighting, filtered by the agent that wrote them, then commit
+A backlog the agents work from: drag a ticket to In Progress and an agent starts on it
+14 specialized roles, a model per agent, and agent teams that hand work over on a visual canvas
+A shared project memory, a prompt library and a skill library that outlive the session
+An iOS and Android companion with push notifications: answer a blocked agent from your phone

What a multiplexer cannot do for you

Herdr owns the terminals. AgentsRoom owns everything around them: the ticket that starts the work, the diff that comes out, the review, the memory, and the phone in your pocket.

Read the diff, not the scrollback

Herdr shows you a pane. AgentsRoom shows you the code: every file an agent touched, side by side diffs with syntax highlighting, filtered by the agent that wrote them, and a commit at the end. A multiplexer has no notion of what a diff is, so reviewing means reading scrollback or opening another tool.

Tickets, not prompts

AgentsRoom carries a Kanban backlog. You write a task, drag it to In Progress, and an agent picks it up with the right role and the right model. Herdr has panes, not work: what each agent should be doing lives in your head or in a text file next to it.

A crew, not a herd

14 specialized roles, a model per agent, and agent teams you draw on a canvas: Dev hands over to QA, QA to the reviewer, with the feature summary, the diff and the risks passed along. In Herdr every pane is the same anonymous shell, and the choreography is yours to script.

Memory that outlives the session

A shared project memory your agents write to, a prompt library and a skill library reused across projects and teammates. Herdr keeps scrollback, and replays it after a restart, which is a real feature, but scrollback is history, not knowledge.

Agents that pilot the IDE

Herdr exposes a socket API so an agent can split panes and prompt another agent. AgentsRoom exposes the product itself over MCP: the backlog, the terminals, the prompt library, the project memory and the browser. An agent files its own ticket, reads the team memory and runs a QA pass without leaving its session.

The phone in your pocket

A companion app for iOS and Android mirrors your agents, sends a push when one is blocked or done, and lets you answer it from anywhere. Add remote fleet for your other machines and cloud agents that run with your laptop shut. Herdr's clients today are the bundled TUI and SSH from another terminal.

Feature-by-feature comparison

How AgentsRoom and Herdr compare on what matters when you run several coding agents at once. The first rows are the ones Herdr wins.

Feature	AgentsRoom	Herdr
Open source	✗	✓
Runs inside your existing terminal	✗	✓
Single binary, no Electron	✗	✓
Plugin marketplace	MCP	✓
Agents keep running with the app closed	Cloud agents	✓
Agent status (working/blocked/idle)	✓	✓
Dedicated terminal per agent	✓	✓
Persistent sessions (detach and reattach)	✓	✓
Multi-project management	✓	✓
Visual desktop app	✓	✗
Built-in diff review and commit	✓	✗
Diff filtered by agent	✓	✗
Task backlog feeding the agents	✓	✗
Specialized agent roles (14)	✓	✗
Agent teams (visual workflows)	✓	✗
Model per agent (Opus/Sonnet/Haiku)	✓	✗
Prompt and skill libraries	✓	✗
Shared project memory	✓	✗
Agents pilot the IDE over MCP	✓	✗
Built-in browser for QA	✓	✗
Scheduled tasks and webhooks	✓	Plugins
Remote machines and cloud agents	✓	SSH
Mobile push notifications	✓	✗
Mobile companion app	✓	✗
Edit CLAUDE.md from the interface	✓	✗
Live preview tunnel (free)	✓	✗
Setup time	30 sec	~1 min

See AgentsRoom in action

Watch how AgentsRoom drives several coding agents from a single window, with a backlog, specialized roles and one terminal per agent.

AgentsRoom desktop app: projects, parallel AI agents, terminals and backlog in one interface

Interactive demo is desktop only

The live demo runs the full desktop app and needs a larger screen. On mobile, explore every feature in short videos instead.

Watch features in video

When Herdr might be the better choice

We believe in honest comparisons. Here are the cases where Herdr is genuinely the better tool.

You want to stay in your terminal

Herdr runs inside iTerm2, Ghostty, Alacritty or whatever you already use, and keeps your themes, your keybindings and your shell. AgentsRoom is a desktop application: it gives you a window, not a pane in your existing setup. If your whole workflow lives in the terminal and you want agent awareness without leaving it, Herdr is the right answer.

You need open source, or the lightest possible footprint

Herdr ships under the Apache 2.0 license as a single Rust binary with no runtime dependency and no Electron, and it has the community to prove the model works: tens of thousands of GitHub stars and hundreds of thousands of installs in a few months. You can read the source, fork it and audit it, and it runs happily on a headless VPS where a desktop app simply cannot. AgentsRoom is a proprietary desktop application with a free tier. If your policy requires open source, or if the machine has no display at all, Herdr wins on both counts.

You want your agents to drive the multiplexer themselves

Herdr exposes an agent native CLI and a local socket API, so an agent can create workspaces, split panes, prompt another agent and subscribe to state changes on its own. On top of that sits a plugin marketplace with hundreds of community plugins and detection for more than twenty agent CLIs. That is a genuinely different model from a graphical command center. If you are building your own orchestration and want a scriptable substrate underneath it, Herdr is designed for exactly that.

Getting started takes 30 seconds

AgentsRoom works alongside your existing projects. Nothing to migrate.

Download AgentsRoom

Download the desktop app from agentsroom.dev. One file, no installer, no dependencies to set up.

Add your projects

Drag your project folders into AgentsRoom. Your existing CLAUDE.md and AGENTS.md files are detected automatically.

Launch your agents

Create agents with specialized roles, assign a model to each, and follow them from your desktop or your phone.

Frequently asked questions

What is Herdr?+

Herdr is an open source runtime for AI coding agents, written in Rust and released under the Apache 2.0 license by Herdr, Inc., which joined Y Combinator in 2026. In practice it is a terminal multiplexer built for agents: each agent gets a real terminal pane, Herdr detects on its own whether that agent is working, blocked or idle, and a background daemon keeps everything alive through a closed lid, a dropped network or a reboot. It detects more than twenty agent CLIs including Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, opencode and Grok, exposes a socket API so agents can drive panes themselves, and has a plugin marketplace. It runs on macOS, Linux and Windows.

How does AgentsRoom differ from Herdr?+

They sit at different layers, and neither is a worse version of the other. Herdr owns the terminals: it is a runtime, so it replaces tmux, not your agent, and everything above the terminal is left to you. AgentsRoom is an agentic IDE above the terminals: it also gives each agent its own terminal, then adds the diff review, a backlog the agents work from, 14 specialized roles, a model per agent, agent teams, a shared project memory and a mobile companion. If you want a better terminal for your agents, Herdr is the answer. If you want to run them as a team, review what they produced and follow them from your phone, that is AgentsRoom.

Does Herdr have a graphical interface?+

No, and that is a design decision rather than a gap. Herdr is a TUI: it draws panes, a sidebar and a status line inside the terminal emulator you already use, with tmux style prefix keys and mouse support. There is no window, no file tree, no diff viewer and no settings screen. AgentsRoom is the opposite bet: a desktop application for macOS, Windows and Linux where the agents, the projects, the terminals, the files, the diffs and the backlog all live in one window.

Does Herdr have a mobile app?+

Not today. Herdr notifies the machine it runs on, and you can reattach to a session over SSH from another terminal, but the bundled TUI and SSH are its only clients so far; its team has said web and mobile clients are on the roadmap. AgentsRoom ships a companion app for iOS and Android that mirrors your agents, sends a push notification when one is blocked or finished, and lets you answer it, start a new agent or read a diff from your phone.

Do my agents keep working when I close AgentsRoom?+

This is the one place where Herdr's architecture has a structural advantage: its daemon runs outside any client, so agents keep going with every window closed. AgentsRoom handles it in two ways instead. Locally, quit the app and choose to restore agents, terminals and dev servers on the next launch, and you find your session exactly where you left it. For work that must run with the laptop shut, cloud agents execute the task on a disposable machine, triggered from the desktop or from your phone, and remote fleet keeps your other machines in the same window.

Is AgentsRoom open source like Herdr?+

No. Herdr is open source under the Apache 2.0 license. AgentsRoom is a proprietary product with a free tier covering 2 projects and 6 agents in parallel, and a Pro plan for unlimited projects. In both cases you bring your own subscription or API key for Claude, Codex, GitHub Copilot CLI, Cursor or any of the 10 other agent CLIs AgentsRoom supports.

Can I use AgentsRoom and Herdr together?+

Yes, and it is a reasonable setup. They do not compete for the same job: Herdr multiplexes terminals on one machine, AgentsRoom orchestrates agents, tickets and projects across machines. Some people keep Herdr for their own terminal work and use AgentsRoom to drive the agents that work from the backlog.

How does Herdr compare to CMUX and Conductor?+

All three answer the same question with different footprints. Herdr stays inside your terminal as a multiplexer. CMUX and Conductor are desktop applications that replace it. We keep a dedicated comparison for each of them: see our CMUX comparison and our Conductor comparison for the detail.

Herdr vs the other agent terminals

The pairings developers actually search for. Herdr stays inside your terminal, the others replace it: here is what changes on each one, and where AgentsRoom fits.

Herdr vs cmux

Both run several coding agents side by side and both stay close to the command line. Herdr is a Rust multiplexer that keeps every agent in a real terminal pane inside the emulator you already use, with a background server you can detach from and reattach to over SSH. CMUX is a terminal-first CLI built around git worktrees, so each Claude session gets its own branch and working copy. Pick Herdr if pane layout and session persistence matter most, CMUX if per-session branch isolation is the point.

Read the full comparison

Herdr vs Conductor

Two very different footprints for the same job. Herdr is an open-source binary that lives in your terminal and never opens a window. Conductor (conductor.build, Melty Labs) is a macOS desktop application that orchestrates parallel Claude Code and Codex agents with automatic git worktrees, checkpoints and built-in code review, inside one repository. Herdr wins on being open source, scriptable and cross-platform; Conductor wins on reviewing what the agents produced without leaving the app.

Read the full comparison

Herdr vs Warp Dev

Both are written in Rust and both run third-party agent CLIs. Herdr is a multiplexer you run inside the terminal emulator you already have, under the Apache 2.0 license, with no account and no credits. Warp Dev replaces that emulator with a full agentic development environment, adds subagent swarms and cloud agents running in Warp-hosted containers, and bills usage in credits. Herdr is the lighter self-hosted option, Warp Dev the more integrated one.

Read the full comparison

Herdr vs Paseo

Herdr organizes terminals, Paseo organizes branches. Herdr gives each agent a pane and detects on its own whether that agent is working, blocked or idle. Paseo is branch-oriented, supports several providers and lets you follow a run from your phone. If staying in a terminal is the requirement, Herdr is the closer fit; if watching agents from a phone is, Herdr has no mobile app at all.

Read the full comparison

AgentsRoom sits one layer above all four. It runs the same agent CLIs and gives each one its own terminal, then adds what a multiplexer never covers: a visual command center, a ticket backlog the agents pick up and deliver, a built-in diff review, 14 specialized roles, a model per agent, a shared project memory, and an iOS and Android companion that notifies you when an agent is blocked.