I run three or four coding agents at once and the part that eats my time isn't the coding, it's that I can't tell what state any of them is in without tabbing through every terminal. One of them is usually sitting on a permission prompt I never saw.
agent-manager is a Go binary on top of tmux. No config file, no daemon, no server. Every agent shows up in one list with a live status, grouped by the project it's running in. Status comes from reading the pane, so adding a CLI is a few lines of regex in a toml file rather than an integration.
The keystroke I use constantly is space: press it on an agent, type, enter, and the prompt lands in that agent's pane without attaching. Press it on a project row and you get a new agent already working on what you typed. ctrl+r opens what an agent changed as whole files with the diff highlighted, and a comment left on a line is sent back to that agent as a prompt.
Sessions are plain tmux sessions, so quitting the manager leaves everything running and v reattaches a session with its conversation intact.
I built it for four agents and most days I use it with one. Still rough in places, and I'd like to hear what breaks for you.
agent-deck was the first one I actually tried to adopt, landed a couple of commits in it. wanted it to be the one.
what I kept missing was answering an agent without attaching to it. so space on a blocked one, type, enter, and it lands in that pane. on a project row it spawns a new agent already working on what you typed. the other half is review, ctrl+r opens what it changed as whole files with the diff tinted, c comments a line, C sends the notes into the pane.
deck does plenty I don't, worktrees, cost, forking. different bets.
This looks really good, but for me the timing of seeing agent-manager is bad: I read about the similar Herdr on HN several days ago and I have completely changed my dev setup for the better.
I have always been a traditional simple command line tool kind of developer (I am an old man, old habbits die hard!) but I recommend at least a one day experiment with tools like agent-manager and/or Herdr that integrate tools like Claude Code and OpenCode into an integrated work environment.
I have been hacking on my own Emacs based agentic coding and work environment (so much fun!) but my recent experience with Herdr has been much more productive.
Anyway, the docs for agent-manager look good, I look forward to reading HNer’s experience with it.
Different scope, as far as I can tell from their site: they describe a multiplexer for all work, spanning remote hosts, sandboxes, CI, production systems and shared terminals. This is a Go binary that drives tmux on the machine you're already on, and every session it creates is an ordinary tmux session you can attach to without it. Much smaller bet, and it stops where tmux stops.
herdr's a whole runtime, own multiplexer, plugins, socket api. mine sits on tmux and doesn't try to replace it, sessions stay normal tmux sessions.
overlap on the status sidebar is real. two things I lean on that I couldn't find a key for over there: space on a blocked agent types the answer into its pane without attaching, and ctrl+r opens its repo as full-file diffs where a comment on a line goes back to that agent as a prompt. herdr's socket api can push text into a pane, so the first one is scriptable at least. correct me if I missed something.
To be clear on the GUI point, since my last reply here answered a different question: this is a terminal tool and it won't convert you. The reason I stay in one is that the agents already live in terminals, so the manager is a view over what's running rather than a second place things live.
I started using herdr last night, and was able to get a workflow I've wanted to set up for a while working, which is to be able to talk to a managing agent in my car and check on / update claude sessions. It uses Telnyx SIP and LiveKit cloud, and I'm using Qwen3.6 35B-A3B quite successfully as the voice layer router. It's still very early but it works quite well.
If you decide to try it out, please make sure to read the security implications. There is no sandboxing added as of yet, and guardrails are pretty minimal.
For all of these tools, now, there are many. After I built my own agent sandboxer[0] I went so far as to create a site dedicated to 36 other similar projects / approaches: https://pleasedonotescape.com/
Claude comes with very nice hook-api you can use it to customise notifications and allow tmux window to blink or to come to the front when Claude needs your attention
There seem to be a lot of these sorts of tools popping up but it’s not clear to me the added value they bring in over using plain tmux (or any other “normal” session multiplexer).
Can someone who uses one of these agent-specific multiplexers share their experience and reasoning for reaching for / building these? What makes this better than a normal multiplexer? I am asking in earnest; I just don’t understand but I want to.
- I get OS level notifications when the agent is ready.
- I don't need to use TMUX's wonky keyboard shortcuts
- I moved off of TMUX anyway, when ssh-ing into remote servers became 'not a thing'
- automatic coding session management, like auto resume, layout manamgement, etc. out of the box, without setting up TMUX, which could be a wormhole for some, by the time you fix mouse scrolling, cut/paste, etc...
I'm currently using CMUX, and been pretty happy with it it at this time, but loving the evolution of all these tools
Most of the AI tools people are building have little to zero value.
If you're making valuable tools, anthropic, openai, or one of the other big players in the space will hire you/buy you out and then they will release the tool themselves.
I'm getting really tired of everyone doing their own special rain dances and then acting like they made it rain.
I build one, an inhouse one for myself. I think it's a worth doing and see if it works for you. Especially for someone who works independently most of the time. I get it to follow and support my working style, workflow and idiosyncrasies. I started out because I wanted something that queues my work serially for each project so I can work on main and I can type what I want to do in it instead of writing to an ever-growing TODO list.
I then make it show icons and indicators for blockers, ready sessions that need attention, TODO lists that include notifications and actions (because it's so easy to miss things while working on/with many sessions). Shows costs (loop coordinator and non-LC costs, by day, etc) so I can optimize costs.
It's fun, a learning experience and it's more productive. With excellent SOTA and coding agents now, we should be building tools to improve our work even more than before. Try it.
Shameless plug for my project, which is a bit different.
I had the problem of crashing terminals due to OOM kills and wanted to switch to a more lightweight terminal. Also I had too many of them and couldn't find the right one any more.
I thought, why not build one yourself. The result:
It has GTK tabbed, (almost) transparently tmux-backed terminals (so quitting or crashing the app and starting it up again restores the state) in colored, named groups.
I recently added Wayland app embedding to run Chrome side by side with the terminal, local to each group, but this is still a bit shaky.
Would be nice if someone would test drive it and give me some feedback. :)
You're not, and this won't convert you. The reason I stay in a terminal is that the agents already live in one, so a TUI is a view over what's running rather than a second place things live. If your agent already runs in a GUI, that argument doesn't apply to you.
100% agree. AI isn't hacking, it's a completely different crowd. So much front page space is wasted talking about the latest version, some funding controversy, or these useless add-on tools.
Nice! Might want to just plug my personal project too - which is more of a gui for managing agents across restarts, and tracking their context: https://github.com/itsdchen/gogoagent
I use coding agent but still don’t see the need to manage a swarm of them like this. Is there an actual use case for this or this is just for tokenmaxxing?
47 comments
[ 0.11 ms ] story [ 14.1 ms ] threadagent-manager is a Go binary on top of tmux. No config file, no daemon, no server. Every agent shows up in one list with a live status, grouped by the project it's running in. Status comes from reading the pane, so adding a CLI is a few lines of regex in a toml file rather than an integration.
The keystroke I use constantly is space: press it on an agent, type, enter, and the prompt lands in that agent's pane without attaching. Press it on a project row and you get a new agent already working on what you typed. ctrl+r opens what an agent changed as whole files with the diff highlighted, and a comment left on a line is sent back to that agent as a prompt.
Sessions are plain tmux sessions, so quitting the manager leaves everything running and v reattaches a session with its conversation intact.
I built it for four agents and most days I use it with one. Still rough in places, and I'd like to hear what breaks for you.
what I kept missing was answering an agent without attaching to it. so space on a blocked one, type, enter, and it lands in that pane. on a project row it spawns a new agent already working on what you typed. the other half is review, ctrl+r opens what it changed as whole files with the diff tinted, c comments a line, C sends the notes into the pane.
deck does plenty I don't, worktrees, cost, forking. different bets.
I have always been a traditional simple command line tool kind of developer (I am an old man, old habbits die hard!) but I recommend at least a one day experiment with tools like agent-manager and/or Herdr that integrate tools like Claude Code and OpenCode into an integrated work environment.
I have been hacking on my own Emacs based agentic coding and work environment (so much fun!) but my recent experience with Herdr has been much more productive.
Anyway, the docs for agent-manager look good, I look forward to reading HNer’s experience with it.
overlap on the status sidebar is real. two things I lean on that I couldn't find a key for over there: space on a blocked agent types the answer into its pane without attaching, and ctrl+r opens its repo as full-file diffs where a comment on a line goes back to that agent as a prompt. herdr's socket api can push text into a pane, so the first one is scriptable at least. correct me if I missed something.
mouse and windows, herdr's ahead.
https://github.com/herdrdev/herdr
If you decide to try it out, please make sure to read the security implications. There is no sandboxing added as of yet, and guardrails are pretty minimal.
https://github.com/jonesy827/mate
For all of these tools, now, there are many. After I built my own agent sandboxer[0] I went so far as to create a site dedicated to 36 other similar projects / approaches: https://pleasedonotescape.com/
0: https://github.com/pjlsergeant/byre
Can someone who uses one of these agent-specific multiplexers share their experience and reasoning for reaching for / building these? What makes this better than a normal multiplexer? I am asking in earnest; I just don’t understand but I want to.
- I don't need to use TMUX's wonky keyboard shortcuts
- I moved off of TMUX anyway, when ssh-ing into remote servers became 'not a thing'
- automatic coding session management, like auto resume, layout manamgement, etc. out of the box, without setting up TMUX, which could be a wormhole for some, by the time you fix mouse scrolling, cut/paste, etc...
I'm currently using CMUX, and been pretty happy with it it at this time, but loving the evolution of all these tools
If you're making valuable tools, anthropic, openai, or one of the other big players in the space will hire you/buy you out and then they will release the tool themselves.
I'm getting really tired of everyone doing their own special rain dances and then acting like they made it rain.
I then make it show icons and indicators for blockers, ready sessions that need attention, TODO lists that include notifications and actions (because it's so easy to miss things while working on/with many sessions). Shows costs (loop coordinator and non-LC costs, by day, etc) so I can optimize costs.
It's fun, a learning experience and it's more productive. With excellent SOTA and coding agents now, we should be building tools to improve our work even more than before. Try it.
I had the problem of crashing terminals due to OOM kills and wanted to switch to a more lightweight terminal. Also I had too many of them and couldn't find the right one any more.
I thought, why not build one yourself. The result:
https://github.com/ThePixelPilgrim/kabelsalat
It has GTK tabbed, (almost) transparently tmux-backed terminals (so quitting or crashing the app and starting it up again restores the state) in colored, named groups.
I recently added Wayland app embedding to run Chrome side by side with the terminal, local to each group, but this is still a bit shaky.
Would be nice if someone would test drive it and give me some feedback. :)
I had no idea how far the ADE / multiplexer space was, I'm very excited for more progress in this space!
Curious how herdr or agent-manager fits into this remote-dev with intermittent connections experience
Ghostty has tabs which show the icons for the terminal TUI. You can just look at those for the status.
Same with windows terminal, and you can use either of those to have tiling.