pyherdr 0.0.4

A terminal multiplexer for AI coding agents — a pure-Python port of herdr.

PyHerdr runs many shells and AI coding agents side by side in one terminal — workspaces, tabs, and split panes, each a real pseudo-terminal — with live agent-status tracking and a mouse-and-keyboard Textual UI. A token-authenticated background server owns the processes, so you can detach and reattach without losing a session.

✨ Features

• Workspaces · tabs · panes — split panes in a binary tree (side-by-side or stacked), zoom, resize by dragging the divider, drag-free keyboard navigation.
• Real terminals — every pane is a live PTY (ConPTY on Windows via pywinpty, the stdlib pty on macOS/Linux) with scrollback.
• Mouse and keyboard — click tabs/panes, right-click for context menus, a clickable bottom action bar, plus a tmux-style ctrl+b prefix for everything.
• Command palette (ctrl+b :) — fuzzy-run any action or your own commands.
• Live agent status — per-pane working / blocked / done / idle rollups with animated spinners, surfaced in the sidebar and tab bar.
• 📊 Resource monitor — right-click a pane or workspace → resource usage, or open Resource monitor — a live task-manager of CPU% + RAM per process, biggest-first, for one pane, a whole workspace, or every session.
• Themes — many built-ins (Catppuccin, Tokyo Night, Gruvbox, One Dark, Solarized, Rosé Pine, Kanagawa, …) with live theme + accent switching.
• Detach / reattach — the background server keeps panes running; reopen the TUI to re-attach. Named sessions via PYHERDR_SESSION.
• Client / server — newline-delimited JSON over a token-authed local socket; a full CLI/API mirrors the UI. Plus cron-scheduled pane commands and git worktree helpers.

📦 Install

pip install pyherdr

Requires Python 3.11+. Runtime deps install automatically: pydantic, pyte, textual, psutil, and pywinpty (Windows only).

🚀 Quick start

pyherdr            # launch the terminal UI (same as: pyherdr tui)

It starts the background server if needed, opens a workspace with a shell, and drops you into the UI. From a source checkout, use python -m pyherdr instead.

🖥️ User Interface Layout

PyHerdr organizes your workspace into a clean, mouse-supported dashboard in your terminal:

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ workspace: backend    ~/code/api    [main]                 │
├────────────────────────────────┬───────────────────────────┤
│ SPACES                         │ 1:server  2:tests   [+]   │
│   backend       running        │ +-------+-------+         │
│   frontend      idle           │ |1-1    |1-2    |         │
│                                │ |$ _    |logs   |         │
│ AGENTS                         │ |shell  |run 3% |         │
│   python   server    0.8%      │ +-------+-------+         │
│   node     frontend  2.1%      │                           │
├────────────────────────────────┴───────────────────────────┤
│ ? help    : palette    + tab    theme    detach    quit    │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

• Sidebar (Left): Manages active workspaces, shows agent status spinners, and displays real-time CPU/RAM resource rollups.
• Terminal Workspace (Right): Houses your tabs and split terminal panes (stacked or side-by-side) running live processes.
• Action Bar (Bottom): Clickable button hotkeys to trigger standard actions without memorizing keyboard prefix chords.

⌨️ Keybindings

Keys go to the focused pane. Press the prefix ctrl+b, then an action key:

Mouse: click tabs/panes, drag a divider to resize, right-click anything for a menu (including resource usage). The bottom action bar has clickable buttons for help, palette, new tab, split, terminal, stats, theme, detach, quit.

🧰 CLI

The UI is a client; everything it does is scriptable:

pyherdr status                         # server + session status
pyherdr workspace create --label api --cwd ~/code
pyherdr tab create --label tests
pyherdr pane create --title logs
pyherdr pane start 1-1 python -i
pyherdr pane send-text 1-1 "print('hi')\n"
pyherdr pane get 1-1                    # pane details incl. live running flag
pyherdr schedule add --cron "*/5 * * * *" --pane 1-1 git fetch
pyherdr server stop

🗂️ Configuration & state

• Session state: .pyherdr/session.json (override with PYHERDR_STATE_PATH).
• Server runtime metadata: .pyherdr/server.json (override with PYHERDR_RUNTIME_DIR).
• Default shell: PYHERDR_SHELL, or terminal.default_shell in config; extra env injected into every pane via terminal.env.
• Named sessions: PYHERDR_SESSION=<name> isolates state + server per name.

The .pyherdr/ folder holds the auth token and is git-ignored — never commit it.

🛠️ Development

python -m venv .venv
# Windows:  .\.venv\Scripts\Activate.ps1   |   macOS/Linux:  source .venv/bin/activate
python -m pip install -e ".[dev]"

Quality gate (all must pass — CI enforces the same):

python -m ruff check pyherdr tests
python -m mypy
python -m unittest discover -s tests

A pure-Python port of the Rust project herdr — see ARCHITECTURE.md for the package structure.

🙏 Attribution & license

PyHerdr is a Python port/fork of herdr, released under the GNU AGPL-3.0-or-later — the same copyleft terms. See LICENSE and NOTICE for the original project's attribution.