ccmanager vs herdr: Comparing Two Terminal Tools for Running AI Coding Agents
How two open-source terminal projects for running and managing AI coding agents compare on features, platforms, licensing, and community.
Contents
OverviewAt a glanceHead to headFeature matrixPricingPros & consCCManager and herdr: the public release record on 2026-08-04What ccmanager and herdr areRunning and persisting agent sessionsPlugins, extensibility, and the marketplacePlatforms, license, and community footprintWhich one fits your workflowVerdictFAQSourcesIf you searched for "ccmanager vs herdr," you are most likely deciding how to launch, keep, and switch between AI coding-agent sessions from a terminal. Both are open-source projects, both live on GitHub, and both are aimed at developers who run more than one agent at a time.
The two projects publish very different amounts of public detail, so this comparison sticks to what each project's own pages stated on 2026-08-04: the herdr website at herdr.dev and its documentation, and the ccmanager repository at github.com/kbwo/ccmanager. Where a page did not cover something, the comparison marks that row as unverified instead of guessing.
At a glance
Both are free, open-source terminal tools for running AI coding agents — ccmanager under MIT and herdr under Apache 2.0, as of 2026-08-04. Pick herdr if you want documented persistent sessions, multi-agent detection, and a plugin ecosystem with a large community (~24k GitHub stars as of 2026-08-04). Pick ccmanager if you prefer a lightweight, MIT-licensed TypeScript project and will confirm its feature set on its GitHub repository. The pages we read on 2026-08-04 documented herdr's capabilities in far more detail than ccmanager's.
Head to head
Key differences side by side; the stronger option is tinted green.
| Feature | ccmanager | herdr |
|---|---|---|
| License | MIT (github.com/kbwo/ccmanager, as of 2026-08-04) | Apache 2.0 (herdr.dev, as of 2026-08-04) |
| GitHub stars (popularity) | ~1.2k stars (as of 2026-08-04) | ~24k stars (as of 2026-08-04) |
| Supported platforms | Not covered on the pages we read (2026-08-04) | macOS, Linux, Windows (beta) per herdr.dev (as of 2026-08-04) |
| Install method | Not covered on the pages we read (2026-08-04) | One-line curl script; Homebrew, Nix, manual (herdr.dev, as of 2026-08-04) |
| Session persistence (detach/reattach, resume) | Not covered on the pages we read (2026-08-04) | Detach/reattach, restart restore, pane history replay, native agent resume documented (herdr.dev/docs, as of 2026-08-04) |
| Multi-agent CLI detection | Not covered on the pages we read (2026-08-04) | States it detects 19 agent CLIs and groups agents by status (herdr.dev, as of 2026-08-04) |
| Plugin system | Not covered on the pages we read (2026-08-04) | Local executable workflow plugins; 471 community plugins; marketplace announced as planned (herdr.dev, as of 2026-08-04) |
| Configurable keyboard shortcuts | Ships shortcuts.example.json (as of 2026-08-04) | Documents configurable keybindings, ctrl+b prefix (herdr.dev/docs, as of 2026-08-04) |
| Primary language | TypeScript (repository files, as of 2026-08-04) | Rust (src/main.rs referenced on herdr.dev, as of 2026-08-04) |
Feature matrix
| Feature | ccmanager | herdr |
|---|---|---|
| Open-source licenseccmanager MIT; herdr Apache 2.0 (as of 2026-08-04) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Free to use (no paid tier on project pages)No paid tier listed on either project's pages as of 2026-08-04 | ✓ | ✓ |
| Public GitHub repositorykbwo/ccmanager and herdrdev/herdr (as of 2026-08-04) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Configurable keyboard shortcutsccmanager ships shortcuts.example.json; herdr documents keybindings (as of 2026-08-04) | ✓ | ✓ |
✓ full · △ partial/paid · ✗ not supported
Pricing
Confirm current pricing on each vendor's site.
- MIT license (github.com/kbwo/ccmanager, as of 2026-08-04)
- No paid tier listed on its GitHub repository as of 2026-08-04
- Configurable keyboard shortcuts via shortcuts.example.json
- Apache 2.0 license (herdr.dev, as of 2026-08-04)
- No paid tier listed on herdr.dev as of 2026-08-04
- One-line curl install; Homebrew, Nix, and manual installs also offered
- 471 community plugins as of 2026-08-04
Pros & cons
- Permissive MIT license (github.com/kbwo/ccmanager, as of 2026-08-04)
- Actively developed — 743 commits as of 2026-08-04
- Fits the TypeScript and npm ecosystem
- Configurable keyboard shortcuts (shortcuts.example.json)
- Smaller community than herdr (~1.2k vs ~24k stars as of 2026-08-04)
- Its GitHub landing page surfaced mostly project metadata on 2026-08-04, so you need to read the repository to learn its full feature set
- Documented persistent sessions: detach/reattach, restart restore, native agent resume (herdr.dev/docs, as of 2026-08-04)
- States it detects 19 agent CLIs and groups them by status
- Cross-platform installs: macOS, Linux, Windows beta
- Plugin system with 471 community plugins as of 2026-08-04
- Large community (~24k stars as of 2026-08-04) under Apache 2.0
- Windows support is labeled beta as of 2026-08-04
- Plugin marketplace was announced as planned, not available today (as of 2026-08-04)
- Still pre-1.0 — its documentation listed 0.8.0 as the latest documented version on 2026-08-04
CCManager and herdr: the public release record on 2026-08-04
| Measured on 2026-08-04 | CCManager kbwo/ccmanager | herdr herdrdev/herdr |
|---|---|---|
| Latest release | v4.2.1, published 2026-07-11 | v0.8.0, published 2026-08-03 |
| Commits, weekly average | 2.4 a week (29 commits in the 12 weeks to 2026-08-04) | 77.2 a week (926 commits in the 12 weeks to 2026-08-04) |
| Most recent commit | 2026-07-20 | 2026-08-03 |
As recorded on 2026-08-04 from each project's public source repository on GitHub, herdr averaged 77.2 commits a week over the preceding 12 weeks while CCManager averaged 2.4 commits a week over the same span — a difference in development cadence that also shows in their most recent tagged releases, herdr's v0.8.0 published 2026-08-03 against CCManager's v4.2.1 published 2026-07-11, both drawn from the same public release records. For someone choosing between the two, these figures reasonably suggest that herdr is under far more active day-to-day change, whereas CCManager's higher version number alongside its slower recent commit rate points to a more settled or mature codebase. What the numbers do not establish is which tool is more reliable, better supported, or higher in product quality, nor do they indicate how many people actually use either one; commit frequency and release dates measure only the pace of published development activity, not outcomes or adoption.
Where these numbers come from: on 2026-08-04 (2026-08-04T00:07:09Z) we called the public endpoints listed below and recorded what they returned. Nothing here is taken from either vendor's marketing pages, and anyone can repeat the same calls. Repository figures describe the named repository — for a closed-source platform that is its official CLI or SDK, not the platform itself. What these figures do not tell you: Commit counts include merges, dependency bumps and documentation changes, and a monorepo will always show more commits than a single-purpose repository, so this measures how busy the named repository is — not progress, quality, or how much of it reaches the product. The commit date says the repository is being worked on, nothing about what changed. None of them measures reliability, support or how either product feels to use.
- CCManager — GitHub REST API · GitHub releases API · the project's own repository and the npm package published from it
- herdr — GitHub REST API · GitHub releases API · the project's own repository, where its releases are published
What ccmanager and herdr are
herdr describes itself as "the agent runtime" — a place your coding agents live so "the work survives the lid closing," per herdr.dev (as of 2026-08-04). Its homepage frames it as a mouse-first terminal multiplexer: you click panes, drag borders, and split from right-click menus, and it groups running agents by status across "spaces" (herdr.dev and herdr.dev/docs, as of 2026-08-04). The site also states it detects 19 agent CLIs and reports 303,720 installs to date and 471 community plugins as of 2026-08-04.
ccmanager is an open-source project at github.com/kbwo/ccmanager, released under the MIT license. As of 2026-08-04 its repository showed roughly 1.2k GitHub stars, 91 forks, and 743 commits, and it is written in TypeScript (the repository carried package.json, tsconfig.json, and a Vitest config). It ships a shortcuts.example.json file, which points to configurable keyboard shortcuts.
Running and persisting agent sessions
Persistent sessions are herdr's headline. Its documentation lists detach and reattach, restart restore, pane history replay, native agent resume, and live handoff as session-state features (herdr.dev/docs, as of 2026-08-04). The homepage adds an SSH bridge so you can get back in "from anything with a keyboard," whether the agents run on a laptop, a desktop, or a rented box.
The ccmanager repository pages we read on 2026-08-04 did not describe session detach, reattach, or resume behavior, so the comparison leaves those rows unverified rather than scoring them.
Plugins, extensibility, and the marketplace
herdr has a plugin system: its documentation describes local executable workflow plugins with manifest actions and event hooks, and the homepage counts 471 community plugins as of 2026-08-04 (herdr.dev and herdr.dev/docs). Sharing works through GitHub today — you tag a repository to publish it. herdr's documentation said on 2026-08-04 that a plugin marketplace was planned ("tag your repo to be listed when the marketplace launches"), so that marketplace is an announcement, not a feature you can use now.
ccmanager ships a shortcuts.example.json for customizing keyboard shortcuts (github.com/kbwo/ccmanager, as of 2026-08-04). The pages we read on 2026-08-04 did not describe a plugin system for ccmanager, so the comparison does not score that row.
Platforms, license, and community footprint
herdr lists macOS, Linux, and Windows (beta) support and installs with a one-line curl script, with Homebrew, Nix, and manual installs also offered (herdr.dev, as of 2026-08-04). It is licensed under Apache 2.0. Its documentation site listed 0.8.0 as its latest documented version on 2026-08-04 — that is the version the docs state, which is a separate identifier from a repository release tag. On GitHub, github.com/herdrdev/herdr showed about 24k stars as of 2026-08-04, while the herdr.dev homepage showed 23,953 stars and 303,720 installs.
ccmanager is MIT-licensed, and as of 2026-08-04 github.com/kbwo/ccmanager showed roughly 1.2k stars, 91 forks, and 743 commits with 4 open issues. Its supported platforms were not listed on the pages we read on 2026-08-04, so the comparison leaves that row unverified.
Which one fits your workflow
The honest selection criteria here are documented capability, platform reach, extensibility, and community size — the dimensions each project's pages actually cover.
If your priority is keeping long-running agent sessions alive across disconnects, working from more than one machine, or drawing on a large plugin and community ecosystem, herdr's documented feature set (persistent sessions, multi-agent detection, plugins) and its larger footprint of about 24k stars as of 2026-08-04 line up with that. If you want a small, MIT-licensed tool in the TypeScript and npm ecosystem and are comfortable reading the repository to confirm what it does, ccmanager is the lighter-weight pick. Because ccmanager's public pages carried mostly project metadata on 2026-08-04, confirm the specific features you need on its repository before committing.
These are two open-source ways to run coding agents from a terminal, judged here on documented capability, platform reach, extensibility, and community size.
For keeping agent sessions alive across disconnects, working from several machines, and tapping a plugin ecosystem, herdr is the stronger documented fit: its site and docs describe persistent sessions (detach/reattach, restart restore, native agent resume), multi-agent detection, and a plugin system, and it carried about 24k GitHub stars as of 2026-08-04. Note that its Windows build is beta and its plugin marketplace was announced as planned rather than shipped, both as of 2026-08-04.
For a smaller, MIT-licensed tool in the TypeScript and npm ecosystem, ccmanager is the lighter-weight choice — actively developed with 743 commits as of 2026-08-04. Because its public pages carried mostly project metadata on that date, check the specific features you need on github.com/kbwo/ccmanager before you rely on it.
FAQ
Are ccmanager and herdr free?
Both are open-source with no paid tier listed on their pages as of 2026-08-04. ccmanager is MIT-licensed (github.com/kbwo/ccmanager) and herdr is Apache 2.0-licensed (herdr.dev).
What platforms does herdr run on?
As of 2026-08-04, herdr.dev lists macOS, Linux, and Windows (beta), with installation via a one-line curl script and also Homebrew, Nix, and manual methods.
Does herdr work with agents other than Claude Code?
herdr's homepage states it detects 19 agent CLIs and groups running agents by status as of 2026-08-04, and its documentation has an Agents guide covering supported agents and detection behavior.
Does herdr have a plugin marketplace yet?
Not as of 2026-08-04. herdr's documentation described plugin sharing through GitHub today and said a marketplace was planned ("tag your repo to be listed when the marketplace launches"), so the marketplace is an announcement rather than a live feature.