A couple of weeks ago, I shared Pi Herdsman here, an extension I've been building to connect independent Pi sessions through Herdr.

At the time, I mentioned wanting to take the Herdr integration further, particularly around spaces, tabs, and project-level coordination.

Quite a bit of that is now implemented, so I wanted to share an update with an actual recording of Pi, Herdr, and Herdsman working together.

What's happening in the video?

I give a Manager one prompt to implement two independent features for a fictional note-taking application.

The Manager delegates both features in parallel:

• Each feature gets its own Lead and Git worktree.
• Each Lead delegates implementation to its own Agent.
• The Leads verify the changes, commit their work, and report back to the Manager.

Herdr organizes the sessions into its native workspace, tab, and pane structure. Placement is configurable, and every session remains directly accessible.

That's one of the things I particularly like about this setup. Even when the agents are coordinating automatically, they're still ordinary Pi sessions that I can switch to, inspect, or interact with whenever I want.

The responsibilities remain separate:

• Herdr manages sessions, processes, panes, workspaces, and placement.
• Pi manages the actual coding-agent conversations.
• Herdsman manages delegation, ownership, lifecycle, and coordination.

Still usable for simpler workflows

The more advanced orchestration is optional.

You can still work in a normal Pi session and occasionally delegate something to a background Agent without setting up a Manager or separate projects.

There are also configurable Agent Definitions for each role, so different Leads and Agents can use different models, tools, instructions, skills, and extensions.

Try it

If you already have Pi and Herdr installed:

pi install npm:pi-herdsman
herdr integration install pi

Repository: https://github.com/boadij/pi-herdsman

Thanks to everyone who shared feedback after the original post. Some of the suggestions around Herdr's higher-level organization helped shape this direction.

I'd especially be interested in feedback from people using Herdr with multiple projects or worktrees. How would you want the sessions and workspace hierarchy organized?

I have been a cmux user for long and really liked all the features it provided and the native feel it gave.

I switched to Herdr recently because the server model just makes sense. Specially when you have multiple machines controlled by Herdr.

While the tool is very powerful, it always felt clunky to not have a native and Mac experience and all the goodness which cmux provided.

I built bigtty to fix that. If you have used cmux, you will feel right at home.

The UI/UX does diverge from a pure Herdr client, but the I believe it is worth it.

Features include:
- cmux-style sidebar for windows(spaces) and tabs, drag and drop panes
- intuitive mac keyboard shortcuts without vim-like prefix mode
- browser pane that tunnels over SSH, meaning a browser pointing to `localhost:3000` talks to the dev server running in the remote server, not your machine
- native file and diff viewer on cmd + click

It is yet another GUI client that everyone is building, but it works for me. Do check it out and let me know what you think of it.

https://github.com/v1k45/bigtty

PS: it is pronounced as big-tee.

I know. Every terminal multiplexer gets about 14 of these, and herdr is no exception. I really did look around first. I tried a few options (herdr-navigator, herdr-bar, etc.) and none of them were quite what I wanted:

• The built-in goto picker has quick status filters (blocked / done / working / idle) that I liked a lot. One key and you see only the agents waiting on you. Its search wasn't good enough for me, though.
• The others had better search but not those filters.

I wanted both: the goto filters, plus real fuzzy search over agent name, pane/tab title, and workspace. So I did the reasonable thing and spent more time building a picker than I'll ever save by using it.

herdr-blink: a fuzzy agent switcher that replaces goto.

• Agents that need me come first: blocked, then done, then working, then idle. Within each group, the most recently used is at the top.
• The quick filters are kept: b / d / w / i.
• fzf-style search across everything: harness, status, title, tab, workspace, repo, branch, and cwd. Space-separated terms can each match a different field, so claude api blocked does what you'd expect. 'exact, ^prefix, and !exclude work too.
• Vim Motions: hjkl + duplication for ↓↑ and ][
• Three views: a flat agent list, a workspaces → tabs → panes tree, and a git repos → worktrees → panes tree. The default view is configurable.
• Harness logos in Kitty-graphics terminals. Yes, this is important.
• It opens fast. It's one socket call, with no git subprocesses.

Install:

herdr plugin install dartyuhov/herdr-blink

Then bind dartyuhov.blink.open to a key; the README has the snippet. Feedback and bug reports are welcome.

PS: The video was made with explainroo.

PPS: Unfortunately, it doesn't work with remote (SSH) sessions yet (see this).