Herdr vs Okena

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.

Okena is a native terminal multiplexer for running multiple command-line agents and projects in one window. Workspaces can be arranged as side-by-side project columns, tabs, split panes, detachable terminal windows, or fullscreen. The terminal uses GPU-accelerated rendering and supports scrollback of up to 100,000 lines. Okena can save and restore workspace layouts and terminal sessions across restarts; persistence is local. Users can manage Git worktrees as projects and view branches and change statistics. Documented integrations include status or usage information for Claude Code and OpenAI Codex, Docker Compose project services, and opening files in editors. Remote control is documented through a local HTTP and WebSocket API, with a browser client and iOS and Android companion apps. Pairing uses HMAC-SHA256 token authentication and rate-limited pairing codes, and downloaded updates are SHA256 verified. Okena is free and open source under the MIT License, with a listed plan of free. Installation commands are provided for macOS, Linux, and Windows, alongside instructions for building from source.