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Den, Herdr and OpenRig.
Herdr and OpenRig are open-source tools for running many coding agents too. They solve different parts of the problem, and Den can sit next to Herdr rather than replace it.
| Den | Herdr | OpenRig | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | A dashboard and control room for the Claude Code sessions already running on your machine | A terminal multiplexer for agents: it owns their terminals in a background server | A daemon that runs agent teams defined in YAML, on tmux |
| Agents | Claude Code | Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, OpenCode and others | Claude Code, Codex and Pi |
| Where agents run | In your own terminal windows; Den reads ~/.claude/sessions | In Herdr's panes; detach and reattach, also over SSH | In tmux sessions OpenRig starts, or Herdr when installed |
| Platforms | Linux (Omarchy/Hyprland for window placement) | Linux, macOS, Windows | macOS, Linux, WSL2 |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
Descriptions of Herdr and OpenRig come from their READMEs as of October 2026. They are their authors' projects.
What Den does that is its own
- One approval inbox. Permission requests, plan reviews, questions and finished turns from every session land in one list; ^Y / ^N answer a waiting permission or plan without switching windows.
- An orchestrator you talk to, a Claude Code session that can message, spawn and staff agents for you. (OpenRig also lets you talk to a lead agent.)
- Missions: standing goals run once, in a loop, fanned out or on a schedule.
- Who directs whom, drawn as a tree from the messages agents send each other.
- Review: every agent's changes as a highlighted diff, each line in the colour of the agent that wrote it, with comments kept as drafts.
- The agent badge: a name, critter, role and task for each session.
Where the others go further
Herdr keeps agents alive when you close the client or lose SSH, works across several machines, supports many agent CLIs and runs on macOS and Windows. OpenRig gives agent teams persistent roles, addresses and a work queue, and runs Claude Code and Codex side by side.
Den works with Herdr
Den notices a Claude Code session running inside a Herdr pane and, on focus, asks Herdr to bring that pane forward.
Built on and for Omarchy
Den is built on and for Omarchy, and that is where every part of it works. Other Linux desktops work too, without the window placement. Den does not run on macOS or Windows.