BCS Blog

COBOL, z/OS performance measurement, and systems programming updates.

herdr

By Arch Brooks on July 28, 2026 in Artificial Intelligence

Back to Blog ← Back

Permalink

If you're evaluating Herdr as a replacement for tmux, it depends on your workflow.

Feature	Herdr	tmux
Persistent sessions	✅	✅
Panes & tabs	✅	✅
Detach/Reattach	✅	✅
SSH support	✅	✅
Mouse support	Excellent	Basic
AI agent awareness	✅ Native	❌
Agent status (working/blocked/done)	✅	❌
Socket/API for automation	✅	Limited scripting
Mature ecosystem	New	Extremely mature
Plugins	Growing	Thousands
Stability	Good, rapidly evolving	Rock solid

Advantages of Herdr

Herdr was designed specifically for AI-assisted development. It manages coding agents (Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, etc.) as first-class citizens instead of just running terminals. It provides:

Live status for every agent
Clickable panes
Mouse-first interface
Remote attachment from another machine
Persistent sessions
Terminal-native (doesn't replace Ghostty, Kitty, Alacritty, etc.)
API that agents themselves can control

Advantages of tmux

tmux remains the better choice if you want:

Maximum stability
Decade-long ecosystem
Extensive customization
Hundreds of plugins
Proven performance on servers
Minimal dependencies

For traditional Linux administration and development, tmux is still hard to beat.

Community feedback

Recent developer discussions show a split:

Many users report Herdr is easy to migrate to from tmux and appreciate its AI-native workflow.
Others prefer tmux because it's more customizable and battle-tested, using separate tools for AI dashboards instead of replacing tmux.

Since you're using Gentoo with local AI models

Given your workflow (Gentoo, Ollama, llama.cpp, OpenCode, multiple local coding agents), Herdr is worth trying. It aligns well with managing multiple AI coding sessions while keeping persistent terminal workspaces. If you mostly use terminals for coding agents rather than general shell multiplexing, it offers capabilities tmux doesn't provide natively.

A practical approach is to keep tmux installed and experiment with Herdr for AI development. Many developers currently use both, choosing Herdr for agent orchestration and tmux for general terminal work.

Comments

No comments yet.

Title *

Slug

Excerpt

Content *

HTML is supported.

SEO Meta Data

Meta Title

Meta Description