Herdr vs Quartz: Features, Pricing & Which Is Better (2026)
A side-by-side comparison of Herdr and Quartz — features, pricing, and ideal use cases — to help you decide which AI tool fits your workflow.
H
Herdr
Ogulcan Celik
Herdr is a terminal-native agent multiplexer — every coding agent at a glance, real terminal views, detach and reattach anywhere without losing sessions.
Key features
- Agent Multiplexer: See every running coding agent at once with real terminal views — blocked, working, or done — instead of wrapped or interpreted output.
- Detach and Reattach Anywhere: Sessions survive restarts and can be reattached from any terminal or over SSH so long-running agents keep working in the background.
- Socket API for Agents: A pure socket API lets agents themselves spawn panes, read output, and wait on each other, with a documented agent-skill.
- Keyboard + Mouse First Class: tmux-style prefix keys plus click, drag, and split — pick whichever interaction fits the moment.
- Plugin Marketplace: Extend panes and workflows with plugins from the herdr.dev plugin marketplace.
- Single Rust Binary: Distributed as one Rust binary (no Electron), installable via curl script, Homebrew, or mise, with a Windows PowerShell beta.
Best for
- Coding Agent Fleet Management: Watch a swarm of Claude, Codex, or Cursor agents in one dashboard while they work on different repos.
- Long-Running Agent Jobs: Kick off multi-hour agent tasks, detach, and reattach from a laptop later to check status without losing progress.
- Remote Development: SSH into a workstation and reattach the exact multiplexer session, so agents keep running on the server between sessions.
- Agent-to-Agent Orchestration: Use the socket API so one agent can spawn sub-agents in new panes and wait on their output.
- Terminal-Centric Workflows: Replace ad-hoc tmux + shell tricks with a purpose-built multiplexer that understands agent lifecycles.
Quartz
datarockets
AI-native email client for Mac that sorts your inbox and drafts replies in your voice, running entirely on-device.
Key features
- On-Device AI: Inbox sorting and reply drafting run locally on Apple Silicon, so email is never sent to external AI providers.
- Importance-Based Triage: Auto-categorizes every message by importance you define and the system learns over time, surfacing what matters and collapsing FYI, Icebox, and Noise.
- Voice-Matched Drafts: Learns your writing style, sender relationship, and thread context to draft replies that sound like you rather than a template.
- Local Encryption: Mail is encrypted on your device with keys only you hold, and the company has no servers that can read it.
- Gmail Integration: Connects to Gmail accounts and has been independently audited under Google's Cloud Application Security Assessment.
Best for
- Inbox Overload: Professionals who get high message volume let Quartz triage by importance so they focus only on mail that needs attention.
- Privacy-Sensitive Email: Users who handle confidential correspondence keep AI processing fully on-device instead of uploading mail to cloud AI services.
- Faster Replies: Drafting routine responses in the user's own voice to cut time spent writing repetitive email.
- Mac-First Workflow: Apple Silicon users who want a native, local-first email experience rather than a web client.