Herdr vs Shpool

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.

Shpool is free, open-source software for keeping named shell sessions alive when connections drop. It targets users who want persistence without terminal multiplexing features such as split windows or tiled panes, preserving native terminal scrollback and copy-paste. For SSH, Shpool runs on the remote host and needs no additional client software. Users reconnect with `shpool attach`; the terminal state is redrawn after reattachment. The command line can list, detach, or kill sessions, and `--ttl` sets a session lifetime. Variables in session names and attach options can redirect terminals to newly named sessions when values change. Bash, zsh, and fish support automatic session-name prompt prefixes. The README documents SSH configuration, shell-function patterns, Cargo installation through crates.io, and Homebrew installation on macOS. Shpool supports Linux, macOS, SSH, and command-line shells. It is licensed Apache-2.0, reports zero advisories, and allows only one client per session.