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

Compare / Orca vs Herdr

Orca vs Herdr

Orca rates 78 against Herdr's 68 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
OrcaStably AI
HerdrHerdr (Can Celik; YC F26)
Rating
AgentsWisdom score7868
Confidencemediumhigh
Rank in categoryNo. 1 of 7No. 3 of 7
Pillars
Adoption & momentum9179
Experts (independent reviews)7575
Crowd (community sample)6347
Community posts sampled912
Experts vs crowdCrowd cooler by 12Crowd cooler by 28
Adoption
GitHub stars78k41k
npm weekly downloadsn/en/e
PyPI monthly downloadsn/en/e
VS Code installsn/en/e
Reported usersn/en/e
Reported customer organisationsn/en/e
Releases, last 90 days968
Benchmarks (shown, not scored)
Terminal-Bench 2.0not listednot listed
SWE-benchnot listednot listed
Independent reviews33
Trust & safety
Overall gradeBB
Permission modelCn/e
Data access scopeBn/e
Data storageAA
Data retention & trainingn/en/e
Incident historyBA
ComplianceCD
TransparencyAA
Price
PriceFreeFree
Plans
  • Free (open source): Free
  • Enterprise: Custom
  • Herdr runtime (open source): Free
Product
CategoryOrchestrators & meta-harnessesOrchestrators & meta-harnesses
MakerStably AIHerdr (Can Celik; YC F26)
LicenceMITApache-2.0
Use it viaDesktop app, Mobile app, CLICLI
Runs onmacos, windows, linuxmacos, linux, windows
Models it drivesany terminal agent: Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Pi, Gemini, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Grok, Amp, Goose, Hermes Agent and othersany terminal agent CLI (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, opencode, Copilot, Grok, Hermes, Pi and others; 22 detected by default)
Key features
  • Parallel agents, each in its own git worktree; fan one prompt across several agents and compare
  • Works with any CLI agent (30+ listed)
  • Terminal splits with persistent scrollback; built-in editor and diff annotation sent back to the agent
  • Embedded Chromium browser with 'design mode' element capture
  • GitHub and Linear integration; SSH worktrees and remote Orca servers
  • Orca CLI and orchestration skills so agents can drive Orca
  • iOS and Android companion apps
  • Claude/Codex account switching and usage tracking
  • 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
Verdicts
Praised for
  • Session/status sidebar for many concurrent agents across repos (Reddit r/ClaudeCode users)
  • Worktree-per-agent model and diff review make comparing parallel attempts straightforward (Chancay, Margrop, HN users)
  • Very active development; free and open source (HN, Reddit)
  • 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)
Criticised for
  • Performance complaints: slow editor, lag in remote work, high CPU (HN, Reddit)
  • Experimental chat UI and mobile input reported as buggy (Reddit)
  • Launches agents with their permission-bypass flags by default
  • Parallel agents multiply token spend (Margrop)
  • 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)
Evidence
Evidence collected26 Sept 202626 Sept 2026
Sources cited34