Herdr is joining Y Combinator. The runtime stays open

Posted by collinmanderson 11 hours ago

Herdr is joining Y Combinator. The runtime stays open(herdr.dev)

175 points | 118 commentspage 2

abofh 5 hours ago|

You've joined an accelerator, not gone public, of course you're not ready to rug pull

hx8 10 hours ago||

I switched from tmux to Herdr about six weeks ago. It's a great bit of software, the UI is focused on switching between multiple agents quickly. I run Herdr to keep my opencode instances well managed, and it also works great for having a few terminals opens next to your agent. I find myself keeping opencode sessions open for longer like what happens with Codex and Claude code, which is great if I need to revisit a context to do some follow up work. I'm genuinely excited to see if the creators can bring even more value to the application.

If you're worried about enshittification I wouldn't be. It's relatively basic open source software that runs locally. A perfect candidate for a fork if the base app starts degrading.

mickaelkerjean 2 hours ago||

What made you prefer it to tmux? Looking at their demo, they put a lot of emphasis on the workspace like feature which tmux already got with sessions. Not sure what is the point of all those new tui runtime, tried a few but always got back to tmux, what am I missing?

exitb 1 hour ago||

What you’re missing is the status updates. Herdr applies pattern recognition to detect the status of an agent running inside, so you get updates on all your agent threads at a glance.

apt-apt-apt-apt 3 hours ago||

Honestly, how are you guys running multiple agents, presumably with them all writing code?

I find myself to be a huge bottleneck, having to do technical design and design reviews, to make sure they're actually working on the right things.

I feel like there's not enough coding work to justify multiple agents, that part doesn't take long, and then it's back to design again.

lonesword 7 hours ago||

Congratulations! I came across herdr a few weeks ago and I've been daily driving it ever since. I've tried a few other tools like Emdash and Superset but Herdr is the only one that did a decent job rendering Claude code UI and didn't randomly crash and could run on a remote server.

jdorfman 6 hours ago||

Congrats Can. Love your product, it has become the default way to orchestrate agents in my terminal.

ernsheong 6 hours ago||

Ironically a lot of YC hate despite the fact that we are literally in their forum.

xyzsparetimexyz 6 hours ago||

Like the articles, hate the influence of VC on open source. Even if it stays open it still gets ruined. See Bun for an example.

rwz 3 hours ago||

I don't see how Bun is "ruined". In fact, I personally see Bun as example of the opposite — Rust rewrite seems like a huge success across the board.

I'm personally using the 1.4 canary (the rust rewrite version) and definitely plan on continuing using it in my future projects.

loveparade 4 hours ago||

I don't think it's about YC specifically, more about VC-driven enshittification of open source software in general.

loveparade 6 hours ago||

Oh no, I was using it. What's a good replacement? Guess I'll go back to tmux.

yoyohello13 3 hours ago|

I’m a fan of zellij

Gooblebrai 7 hours ago||

I thought the A2A protocol from Google would solve this of our personal agents speaking with company agents

htrp 7 hours ago|

90% certain A2A is dead....

phrmendes 4 hours ago||

Thanks god I didn't replace tmux

nlh 10 hours ago||

I am a HUGE herdr fan - discovered it a few months ago and it's exactly what I need for my workflow. Thousands of others have discovered it as well, which is awesome.

I have such mixed feelings about this - YC means VC means commercialization means enshitification. I really wish that weren't the case, but it so very often is.

Here's hoping this one's different...

(PS I am a big YC fan in general! I don't mean to sound anti-YC or anti-VC or anti-capitalism. But when it comes to low-level essential development tools, I'll never forget what happened to Warp, which started out as such a nice clean terminal project and turned into an absolute money-chasing mess.)

scubbo 8 hours ago||

> I am a big YC fan in general

Genuine question - why?

an0malous 9 hours ago|||

It’s literally the VC playbook, the whole point of the funding is to undermine competitors with subsidized/free products and then raise prices/enshittify. Anyone who thinks it’ll be different this time is fooling themselves.

tomhow 8 hours ago|||

> YC means VC means commercialization means enshitification

It doesn't have to be that way. YC partners are supportive if you just want to take the YC funding and nothing more, keeping the team small and just focusing on making the product better for customers. Indeed YC advises against taking VC if you don't need it.

abirch 8 hours ago||

Yes there are companies such as Streak. It's possible to pay back early funders so it's a win-win.

tamimio 10 hours ago|||

Yeah, it’s great but with this, it’s probably the time to find an alternative, I probably can see where this will be in a year or so.

pecheny 10 hours ago||

why “find” an alternative? if you’re a herdr user you’re perfectly capable of maintaining a fork just for yourself :)

sarky-litso 9 hours ago||

I can't tell if this is sarcasm but in case its not, being capable of doing something and having the desire and resources to do it are not the same thing

inigyou 9 hours ago||

It's a management tool for multiple superintelligent agents, right? Just tell one of them to fork herdr so VC can't make it worse on purpose.

Fervicus 8 hours ago||

> Here's hoping this one's different...

It won't be.

Waterluvian 7 hours ago|

I haven’t seen one of those classic Herdr/Herdly tech names in a while now.

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