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Herder: Taming the Chaos of Running Multiple Coding Agents

In this roughly 10.5-minute tutorial, Chase (Chase AI) walks through Herder, an open-source terminal multiplexer built for the era of parallel coding agents. If you run Claude Code and Codex (or open code and other harnesses) at the same time, you know the pain of juggling six, seven, or eight terminals, trying to figure out which needs attention, and dreading accidentally closing a window mid-task. Herder solves exactly that.

The Problem: Terminal Sprawl

Running several coding agents simultaneously means many terminal windows scattered across the desktop. The core headaches are:

• Monitoring all of them at once is difficult.
• Knowing which agent needs your attention first is unclear.
• Accidentally exiting a window kills whatever the agent was doing.

Herder is lightweight, works on both Mac and Windows, and installs with a single line of code.

What Herder Is

Herder is a terminal multiplexer: it lets you control multiple terminals from a single space. In the demo, Chase has two Claude Code terminals at the top, open code on the left, and Codex in the bottom right, all in one view. Herder buys you three things:

• Organization — everything lives in one structured space instead of loose tabs floating on the desktop.
• Monitoring — it is agent-forward, showing which agents are working, which are done, and which are stuck.
• Persistence — Herder acts as a server, so agents keep running in the background even after you exit the window.

How It Compares to tmux and Zellij

A natural question is how Herder differs from established multiplexers:

• vs. tmux: tmux has controlled terminals from one place for years, but Herder is agent-forward. The dedicated agents panel on the left shows which agents are running, which need input, and which are done, even for agents you cannot see visually. tmux does not do this out of the box.
• vs. Zellij: The biggest differences are persistence and easy Windows support. Because Herder runs as a server, work continues in the background, and you can reconnect from your phone or over SSH.

Installation and First Launch

1. Go to herder.dev or the Herder GitHub to find the install command.
2. Copy the single install command, paste it into your terminal, and run it.
3. Open a terminal and type herder to launch.
4. The interface shows three things: spaces, agents, and your actual terminal.
5. It behaves like a normal terminal, so launching Claude Code inside it just works, and Claude then appears as an agent in the current space.

Key Concept: The Organizational Hierarchy

Herder organizes work in nested layers, much like folders:

• Spaces are the top level. Think of them as projects (or folders). You can create, rename, and switch between them, and you can even click with your mouse rather than relying purely on key binds.
• Tabs live inside a space, like sub-folders. Each tab is essentially a new terminal tab and can be named (e.g., "research" or "dev server").
• Panes and agents live inside each tab. Right-click and "split right" to open, say, Codex alongside Claude Code, and you can run as many agents as you want inside a single tab.

The whole point is to fight the chaos of many terminals running many agents: spaces keep projects separate, tabs keep sub-tasks within a project organized, and the agents panel lets you tab through and see status at a glance.

Key Concept: Making Headless Agent Work Visible

Chase finds Herder especially useful when using Claude to talk to Codex and vice versa, work that is often done headlessly, where you cannot see what the agents are actually doing. Herder makes that back-and-forth visible.

He demonstrates a Codex review skill: Claude Code creates a plan and sends it to Codex for critique, and they iterate until they reach a proper plan. Normally invisible, this exchange is spawned into a visible Herder pane so you can watch Codex list its issues, mark the verdict as "revised," and continue until the plan is finalized.

Key Concept: The Herder Skill and Plugin Marketplace

The Herder skill teaches your agents how to use Herder, so agents can spawn their own panes and create their own spaces without you manually managing the organization. It installs with a single line of code found on the Herder GitHub under agent skills. There is also an entire plugin marketplace where people have added a variety of add-ons to Herder.

Persistence in Action

To prove persistence, Chase exits the terminal completely while two agents are mid-work. Reopening the terminal and typing herder brings everything back, still running. As long as the computer stays on (not asleep), agents keep working, so you can leave a laptop closed and running and let agents work as long as you want. To actually stop a session, right-click a pane and hit "close pane," or right-click a space and close it entirely.

Interface Details and Key Binds

• A little yellow "snake" animation indicates an agent is actively working.
• The settings menu offers themes, sounds, toasts, labels, integrations, and experiments.
• Right-clicking any pane lets you rename, split, zoom in, and zoom out.
• Key binds are similar to tmux: hit a prefix (e.g., Ctrl + B) to enter prefix mode, then a follow-up key (e.g., V for a vertical split). Most actions can also be done with right-click and the mouse.

Where the Real Value Is

Chase notes that Claude Code's built-in agent view is great, but it only works inside Claude Code. When you are running agents across different harnesses (Codex, open code, and more), Herder's monitoring, organization, and persistence shine. It is open source, free, and works on both Windows and Mac.

Practical Takeaways

• Consolidate your agents: one Herder space beats a dozen scattered terminal windows.
• Use the agents panel to triage which agent needs attention without staring at every pane.
• Lean on persistence so exiting a window never kills in-progress work.
• Install the Herder skill so agents can spawn and organize panes themselves.
• Make headless agent-to-agent work visible for skills like Codex review.
• It is cross-harness: unlike Claude Code's agent view, Herder monitors Claude, Codex, and open code together.

Notable Quotes

"Herder really buys us three things. One, organization. Two, the ability to easily monitor multiple tabs. And then three, persistence."

"Even if I exit out of that window, it's still running in the background and I can very easily bring it back up."

"All this is meant to fight the chaos that happens when you have a ton of terminals with a ton of agents doing a ton of different things."

"Agent view inside of Claude Code is great, but that only works inside of Claude Code. Oftentimes I want to use Codex and bringing in something from open code."