Independent register of AI agents & harnesses · no sponsored placementsEdition 2026-09 · 107 entries · evidence to 26 Sept 2026

Compare / Herdr vs Paperclip

Herdr vs Paperclip

Herdr rates 68 against Paperclip's 58 in this edition. The table lines up every dimension we record; the leading value in each numeric row is marked. Add a third or fourth entry.

Dimension
HerdrHerdr (Can Celik; YC F26)
PaperclipPaperclip (paperclipai)
Rating
AgentsWisdom score6858
Confidencehighhigh
Rank in categoryNo. 3 of 7No. 6 of 7
Pillars
Adoption & momentum7969
Experts (independent reviews)7556
Crowd (community sample)4746
Community posts sampled1221
Experts vs crowdCrowd cooler by 28Crowd cooler by 9
Adoption
GitHub stars41k85k
npm weekly downloadsn/e27k
PyPI monthly downloadsn/en/e
VS Code installsn/en/e
Reported usersn/en/e
Reported customer organisationsn/en/e
Releases, last 90 days810
Benchmarks (shown, not scored)
Terminal-Bench 2.0not listednot listed
SWE-benchnot listednot listed
Independent reviews36
Trust & safety
Overall gradeBB
Permission modeln/eC
Data access scopen/eB
Data storageAA
Data retention & trainingn/en/e
Incident historyAC
ComplianceDD
TransparencyAA
Price
PriceFreeFree
Plans
  • Herdr runtime (open source): Free
  • Open source, self-hosted: Free
Product
CategoryOrchestrators & meta-harnessesOrchestrators & meta-harnesses
MakerHerdr (Can Celik; YC F26)Paperclip (paperclipai)
LicenceApache-2.0MIT
Use it viaCLIWeb app, CLI, API
Runs onmacos, linux, windowsmacos, linux, windows, web
Models it drivesany terminal agent CLI (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, opencode, Copilot, Grok, Hermes, Pi and others; 22 detected by default)Claude (via Claude Code), GPT (via Codex), Gemini (via Gemini CLI), Cursor, any agent reachable by CLI or HTTP heartbeat
Key features
  • Workspaces, tabs and panes with mouse support and tmux-style detach/reattach
  • Automatic agent state detection (working, blocked, done, idle) with notifications
  • Remote machines over OpenSSH from one client window (v0.9.0+)
  • Socket API and CLI for scripting agents, panes, workspaces and worktrees
  • Plugin marketplace and custom popup panes
  • Session history and restore stored locally
  • Org chart of agents with roles, reporting lines and per-agent permissions
  • Ticket-based task system with atomic checkout and goal ancestry
  • Scheduled heartbeats and routines (cron, webhook, API triggers)
  • Per-agent/project budgets with hard stops and cost tracking
  • Board approval gates for hires, strategy and spend; audit log
  • Adapters for Claude Code, Codex, Cursor/Gemini CLI, bash and HTTP bots (e.g. OpenClaw)
  • Multi-company isolation in one deployment; export/import of company templates
  • Isolated execution workspaces via git worktrees
Verdicts
Praised for
  • Users running many agents say it makes it easier to see which agent needs attention than plain tmux (HN comments, July-Sept 2026)
  • Reconnect from several machines to the same running agents over SSH (HN, Bitdoze review)
  • Reviewers credit the socket API for orchestration patterns tmux lacks (Bitdoze, Developers Digest)
  • Structured hierarchy, handoffs and task tracking for many agents (Villela, Reddit users)
  • Useful for bootstrapping larger projects and drafts quickly (Ganglani, Villela)
  • Free, MIT-licensed and self-hosted
Criticised for
  • Several users do not see the added value over tmux or zellij (HN, r/commandline)
  • Reports of lag, rendering and hotkey issues, e.g. with many remote machines or under WSL (HN Sept 2026, r/ClaudeCode)
  • Agent detection relies on screen manifests and is probabilistic for unsupported agents (Developers Digest)
  • Heavy token consumption; users report subscription windows exhausted quickly (Reddit, Better Stack video)
  • Marketing of 'zero-human companies' overstates what it can do (Ganglani, r/AI_Agents)
  • Setup and adapter bugs; runaway retries hard to stop (r/PaperclipAI, HN)
  • Repeated critical security advisories in 2026, and adapters skip agent permission prompts by default
Evidence
Evidence collected26 Sept 202626 Sept 2026
Sources cited44