Herdr vs muxel
Herdr
herdr.dev
muxel
muxel.shSide by side
| Figure | Herdr | muxel |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Terminal Multiplexers | 8.1 (#7) | 8.4 (#2) |
| Agent status | Herdr marks agents as working, blocked, or idle so users can find agents that need attention. | Live status identifies agents as working, idle, blocked or done, with desktop notifications when an unfocused agent needs attention. |
| Product | Herdr is a background runtime that keeps coding agents’ terminal sessions running so users can return to them from another machine. | muxel is a native terminal multiplexer for managing multiple AI coding agents from one window. |
| Support | The maker’s site links to a Discord community and lists [email protected] as a contact email. | The maker directs questions about its terms and privacy policy to its GitHub issue tracker. |
Plans
In their own words
Herdr
Herdr is a background runtime for keeping coding agents’ terminal sessions available when you move between machines. It brings workspaces, tabs, panes, and agents into one terminal interface, with status labels that distinguish working, blocked, and idle agents. Herdr says it detects 22 agent command-line tools out of the box, including Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, OpenCode, Grok, Copilot, and Hermes. Panes and processes continue running when a client detaches, and saved layouts can be restored after a server restart. Integrations can report session identities for resuming after a restart, and some also report agent state. You can add SSH-accessible machines and view their workspaces alongside local ones. The runtime includes a local socket API and CLI for scripts, tools, and agents. It is free under the Apache License 2.0 and runs on macOS, Linux, and Windows. Pane screen history is off by default because terminal output may include sensitive information. Herdr Cloud is described as coming soon.
muxel
Muxel is a desktop terminal workspace for keeping AI coding agents and shells together. Its panes can be split horizontally or vertically, grouped into tabs, or moved into separate windows. Configurable presets cover Claude, opencode, Amp, Grok, Hermes, Ollama, Ollama Code, Pi, and Shell. Git worktrees isolate projects and support review and GitHub pull request actions. Prompt-based task runners can launch jobs and schedule saved prompts every few minutes, hourly, or daily. The app includes an editor, file browser, diff review, Git controls, a command palette, and terminal scrollback search. Agent status indicates working, idle, blocked, or done, with desktop notifications when an unfocused agent needs attention. Muxel runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows; agents can run on remote hosts over SSH while the interface and file tools stay local. It is free and open source under GPL-3.0, with a separate commercial license available. The maker says Muxel does not send projects, terminal contents, prompts, or usage to them; configured providers have their own data policies. Windows does not support tmux session persistence.