Herdr is joining Y Combinator. The runtime stays open

Hey everyone, it’s Can, the only personification down Herdr. This station is astir really I decided to alteration that.

Four months agone I was looking for different job. Thinking astir wherever to spell career-wise. Thinking astir package engineering and its early successful general, my hobby projects, applications, whiteboard interviews (I still can’t judge we do those). And astatine immoderate constituent it deed me: I americium the bottleneck.

This is simply a guidance and engineering problem. I don’t want to instal an app aliases study a caller instrumentality conscionable to negociate my agents and my improvement style. I want thing that fits me. You cognize really each institution releases their ain supplier these days? No, don’t do that. Let my supplier merge pinch your product, don’t connection maine different agent.

Same thought here. I didn’t for illustration what I tried, truthful why not build it? So I built a runtime. But what is simply a runtime?

Runtime

CLI coding agents tally successful terminals, and terminals person ever been our home: editing codification (yes, nvim chads), moving servers, navigating projects, maintaining CI, machines, configurations. It’s the root. It’s the connection. So agents request first people primitives there.

A terminal pane belongs to an agent. A pane belongs to a tab. Tabs beryllium to a project.

They request to beryllium persistent. We person agents moving for hours now, sometimes days. And erstwhile you person the runtime, wherever they tally stops mattering. You should beryllium capable to tally them anyplace and support them running.

That’s wherever Herdr was born. But a runtime without an interface is nothing, so: the TUI.

TUI

The TUI is the UI I usage each day, and it carried Herdr this far. Not because it’s a UI, but because it shows the concepts Herdr believes in: search agents astatine a glance, dividing activity betwixt projects alternatively of getting mislaid successful a heap of agents, being alerted only erstwhile an supplier really needs you.

It besides has 1 large advantage, and it’s the logic it stays first people forever: it’s bundled. Install Herdr connected your VPS, ssh in, and your UI is already there. Or tally herdr --remote user@host and it installs itself. Depending connected your web speed, you’re a mates of seconds distant from an supplier running. One bid and you’re in. Nothing thumps that.

Still, the TUI was ne'er meant to beryllium the only client. A runtime intends group tin build connected apical of it, and group did! A Raycast extension, a Stream Deck pinch buttons for herdr, an iOS app that drives a full convention from a phone. More than 500 plugins, 1 period aft the marketplace released. I didn’t build immoderate of these.

The TUI has its limits too. Some of the ideas successful my caput are difficult to build wrong a terminal, and I spot terminals, but Herdr will request much clients. More connected that later.

Where we are now

So a solo task reached 25k stars and 340k downloads, and it became much than 1 personification tin carry.

Herdr is joining Y Combinator, F26 batch. I’m excited to make Herdr a institution that builds a developer instrumentality for anyone juggling agents each day. I want to build a mini team: group who support the runtime healthy, robust, fast, moving anyplace easily, and much extensible. Letting you do much while Herdr stays small.

The runtime, what you usage correct now, stays free. Apache-2.0. That’s why I precocious switched it from AGPL to Apache: I want everyone to usage Herdr freely, without immoderate problem.

Where we’re going

I want to build connected apical of the unfastened Herdr runtime for illustration everyone else. I’ll support supporting the unfastened root while building the features group really need. The request is already visible: aggregate clients, a laptop, a VPS for the six hr job, a sandbox for risky codification and ephemeral agents. Herdr tin tally anyplace today, but those machines are disconnected.

It should beryllium connected.

There are galore much features successful my head, but I don’t want to rush. People support telling maine they emotion that Herdr stays lean, and that’s what I want to protect. In an property wherever adding 1 much characteristic costs nothing, choosing what goes successful the halfway is the astir important decision, I believe. So the halfway stays small, and everything other stays imaginable done extensions: your style, your flows, your company’s setup, your themes, your crazy ideas.

Thank you for getting Herdr this far. Thanks for the support, for sharing the love. You person nary thought really grateful I am.

Anyway, backmost to work.