Herdr, the open-source terminal runtime that CLI coding agents run inside, switched its license from AGPL to Apache-2.0 on August 6, 2026. The change removes the copyleft restriction that kept teams from embedding Herdr in commercial products, and it lands as the project crosses 25,000 GitHub stars and 340,000 downloads. Herdr keeps coding agents like Claude Code and Codex alive across machines, so a run that takes hours or days no longer dies when you close your laptop.
Try it: run an agent that survives your laptop closing
Install Herdr, open its TUI, and organize work into projects, tabs, and agent panes. Point it at a VPS with herdr --remote user@host and it installs itself over SSH, then runs your agent remotely while you disconnect and reconnect from anywhere. The Rust-based runtime holds each agent's state and connectivity, so a long refactor or an overnight test loop keeps going without a babysitter. A plugin marketplace, which grew past 500 plugins in its first month, adds Raycast, Stream Deck, and iOS clients on top of the core terminal interface.
Why it matters
Most coding agents are tied to a single terminal session: close it and the run stops. Herdr treats the agent as a persistent process you can move between machines, which is the piece missing from the current wave of CLI agents. The Apache-2.0 relicense matters as much as the runtime itself, because it lets studios and tool builders ship Herdr inside their own products without the AGPL source-sharing obligation. For anyone building an automated pipeline on top of coding agents, that is the difference between a demo and a dependency.
Key details
Herdr is written in Rust and now carries a full Apache-2.0 license, replacing the AGPL terms it shipped with earlier this year. The founder confirmed the core stays free: "The runtime, what you use right now, stays free. Apache-2.0." Remote execution runs over standard SSH, so any Linux box or cloud VPS works as a host with no proprietary agent required. The same self-hosted model underpins setups like Devin Outposts and multi-model harnesses like OpenCodex, but Herdr focuses on keeping the agent running rather than on choosing the model.
What to do next
Clone the repository, run Herdr against a spare VPS, and move one of your existing Claude Code or Codex workflows into a remote pane to see whether persistent execution fits how you build. If you maintain a tool that wraps a coding agent, the Apache-2.0 switch is the moment to evaluate Herdr as an embeddable runtime rather than rebuilding session persistence yourself.
