I can't speak to the GUI, just the TUI compared to tmux.

herdr is very flexible, but it shines when you are working with multiple projects, with multiple worktrees, and multiple agents within those projects.

1. herdr uses workspaces to help organize tabs. Conceptually, a workspace probably maps to a project, but it doesn't have to.

2. herdr has native worktree support, and can create a nested workspace per worktree with a keyboard or CLI command. It can check out worktrees for you

3. herdr identifies agents across tabs and workspaces and pulls them out into an extra navigational pane. It shows the status of those agents (e.g. idle, working, waiting, done), and can play a sound when they change state. This helps you track multiple agents across multiple projects and quickly switch to them when they need help without needing to remember "claude is running in space 2, tab 3"

4. herdr integrates with your agents, which can control herdr's UI and rename tabs based on their status.

5. All this is scriptable via the herdr CLI, and agents are very good at it. But it also has full mouse support, if you're new to multiplexers its very easy to start interacting with it.

I think i built something similar after herdr was released but i can say the reason is at least

tmux is definitely usable but moving between workspaces/repos can be annoying if youre managing mahy many things at once. and difficult to organize. more over having agents manage other agents via tmux can lead to garbled input/output

i havent used codex. claude subagents i think arent the right comparison - the closer comparison would be claude managed agents. but i imagine one reason herdr might be better would be that you’re not stuck in the anthropic ecosystem

I'm also curious, if you just ask Codex, Claude etc already do subagent management on their own, and if instructed, can certainly set up a structured communication system for the group. Why these Herdr, Pi etc products on top?

Is Codex, Claude Code mismanaging when no tokens left? Or any other specific reason?

It adds some abstractions and a plugin architecture for extensions. I checked it out but ended up not using it. I run my own harness of harnesses over tmux centered around tasks rather than sessions.

I suppose it is just the convenience of having an opinionated app that works with agents out of the box, tmux could be more powerful but similar to vim vs vscode, you need to tune it in.

My question also!