Transcript
00:00:00herder an agent multiplexer that runs inside the terminal you already use so you can run a bunch of
00:00:05coding agents side by side in different panes or tabs and actually see which one is working which
00:00:10one is blocked or which one is done complete with system notifications in a single rust binary which
00:00:15means no electron or no separate app it even has a clever way of working over ssh but with a tool
00:00:20like cmux growing in popularity why would you bother using herder hit subscribe and let's find out
00:00:28herder was built by a developer called ogle can celix who i'm assuming dropped the e from the word
00:00:34herder because he's a fan of the early 2000s i don't know but i'm assuming herder is a tool that
00:00:39you can use to herd multiple agents like a sheep herder which is a problem for well let's say most
00:00:45developers out there who are using ai to do development because it's difficult to keep
00:00:49track of what each harness is up to her to take lots of inspiration from tmux which is a terminal
00:00:54multiplexer with tabs split panes and persist sessions even after you disconnect but tmux was
00:01:00built decades ago long before ai agents existed so if you do end up running a harness inside one of
00:01:06its panes it has no idea it exists or what its status is this is why tools like warp or cmux exist
00:01:12which pull you out of your own terminal and into their own so you have to learn someone else's workflow
00:01:18which is why ogle can celix built herder to do both at once the persistence of tmux with agent awareness
00:01:24baked in and because herder is just one rust binary built with ratatouille the whole thing is just
00:01:29rendering text to your terminal so it can run anywhere that your terminal can including over ssh there's
00:01:35also a socket api which means agents can drive herder themselves which is really impressive to see
00:01:40in fact let's go through a quick demo so after installing herder using brew or curl or even a
00:01:46nix flake i'm so glad they added this option you can just run the herder command which will give you
00:01:50this view showing the terminal some workspaces and some agents now i have zoomed in a tiny bit so there
00:01:56are a few things you won't be able to see like the full extent of the commands but i'll try and do my
00:02:00best to show herder off so here you can see there aren't any workspaces and by default the prefix
00:02:05is ctrl b which is similar to tmux but i'll show you how to change that later on now the prefix has
00:02:10already been activated which i can see by this navigate down here so all i have to do is press
00:02:14shift and n to create a new workspace now of course you can navigate entirely using your keyboard
00:02:19so i can press the prefix and the question mark to see all the keyboard shortcuts but you can also
00:02:23use your mouse so i can create a new tab called two i can right click to close the tab rename my
00:02:28workspace to test create a new workspace access these settings in the menu and so on i can even
00:02:34create horizontal and vertical splits as well as renaming the specific pane and navigate between
00:02:38pains all using the mouse but the true selling point of herder is how it interacts with agents
00:02:43so at the moment this is using bash but i like to use fish so i'll change both of these terminals
00:02:46and then i'm going to open cord code on the top one and codex on the bottom but already we can see
00:02:51herder has automatically picked up on the agents and has given them statuses so claude is blocked
00:02:55and codex is idle let's address them both by giving them access to these directories and of course i can
00:03:00give them both prompts like what model am i using and we can see that herder immediately updates to
00:03:05tell us that claude is working which also works with codex cli now i've also noticed i'm in the wrong
00:03:09workspace so let's delete this one and rename this one to test but with herder the agents can also
00:03:15create workspaces tabs and splits as well let's see how that works so i'm going to quit from curda
00:03:20by pressing prefix and then q and then you can see here all the options that the herder cli gives us
00:03:24so what i'm going to do is go back into herder and this is one selling point is that it goes back to
00:03:29the exact workspace and the exact agents i had open with the same sessions but i'm going to create
00:03:34a new workspace i'm going to go into a directory and then i'm going to open up cord code and now
00:03:38i'm going to give a prompt to use herder cli to spawn up two panes with claude code in them both
00:03:44run one with this prompt to summarize the largest file in the project and another one with this prompt
00:03:49to search the code base for any hard-coded api key or secrets and here it's loaded up a new pane with
00:03:54called code i'm actually going to zoom out so we can see this a bit better and now it's running the
00:03:58other prompt in the code base so we can scroll up to see that this one has finished we can also see
00:04:03it's giving them appropriate titles so claude secrets and discord and here it's found no hard-coded api
00:04:09keys yes from here we can summarize the output of both panes and then get claude to close them so now
00:04:14it's got the information from the first pane and closed it and it's doing the same to the second pane
00:04:18which it's closed as well and down here it's giving me a nice summary now because herder is
00:04:23just a binary that you can install into your terminal i can ssh into a linux server and install herder
00:04:28the same way i installed it on a mac you can see i've done this earlier and it's restored my previous
00:04:32session so i've got open code open in one pane and i'm using vim to go through some code in another
00:04:36pane but the problem with this is that it doesn't carry over my herder configuration settings i have on
00:04:41my local mac machine to be honest i don't have many settings all i've done is change the keys from
00:04:45control b to control space and i've changed the theme to terminal but if i had a highly edited
00:04:50configuration file with specific keyboard shortcuts this could get quite annoying so one way to get
00:04:55around this is to use herder with the remote flag and ssh directly into your server which i'll explain
00:05:01exactly what it does before i hit enter so herder works by running a server and a thin client that
00:05:06communicates using a unix socket so the client sends keystrokes to the server and the server manages
00:05:11tabs pains persistence and other things now in the case of the ssh so using remote the server runs on
00:05:18the remote machine and the client actually runs on your local machine so it sends keystrokes via unix
00:05:24socket to the server and the server can show the clients the files that are on the machine itself
00:05:30but the client itself can use all the configuration settings that are on the local machine that it's
00:05:35attached to so let's take a look at that in action so back to where we left off now if i hit enter
00:05:40it's going to connect directly to my ssh machine which we can see has open code and the code file
00:05:45that we're viewing with vim but if i press control b it doesn't seem to do anything because it's using
00:05:49the configuration on my mac which works with control space to see the prefix now while we're here let's
00:05:54have a look at what else we can do in the menu so we can view keybinds which i showed you earlier but
00:05:59we can also change the theme and header gives you many themes to choose from from nord to govbox and even
00:06:04cap routine and it's also an option to trigger sound alerts and a toast menu which you can change
00:06:10via the terminal or via the system now as usual there are so many other features of herder that
00:06:15i didn't get around to going through like work tree integrations official harness integrations some of
00:06:19which you saw in the demo that give your harness access to herder official skills and lets you resume
00:06:24the exact sessions you had before you closed herder honestly the fact that this works in your existing
00:06:29terminal to me is the main selling point because as much as i love using cmux i love using western a lot
00:06:35more i've configured it to the exact way i like to use it and the fact that if i want to manage my
00:06:39agents all i have to do is spin up a new terminal tab inside westerm and just run herder yes you do
00:06:45miss the web browser from cmux but to be honest i didn't really use it much anyway and for those of
00:06:50you watching right now who use windows i have some really bad news for you because of the whole unix
00:06:54socket thing and the fact that herder uses a terminal pty there isn't currently great windows support at
00:06:59the time of recording but if you are using windows i think it's time to bite the bullet and just
00:07:04use dual boot linux yes wsl does exist but it's not exactly the same right
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