Herdr-native AgentOps · human supervised

Explore a change three ways.Keep the one you trust.

Start with Explore. Swarm gives one bounded coding task to agents in separate worktrees, shows the work, and lets you choose what reaches your branch. Browser, Guard, and Conductor support different parts of supervised agent work without pretending to be one automatic runtime.

Run your first Explore Read Explore docs

Truth boundary: Explore is the ready first workflow. Deliver is an attended Stage 3 lifecycle with reviewed local-ref apply, requiring exactly Herdr 0.7.5 and explicit operator receipts.

01 / EXPLORE

Turn uncertainty into comparable work.

Explore is the suite's turnkey path. Swarm records a base SHA, fans a shared task into independent worktrees, and brings each candidate back to a review surface. Agents commit locally and never push.

01

Bound the question

Give every slot the same narrow task and name the criterion that will decide the winner.

02

Separate the changes

Each agent starts from the recorded fork SHA in a plugin-owned worktree and branch.

03

Inspect evidence

Status reports committed and uncommitted counts and marks each slot finished. Your validate.sh checks each slot's exact commit, and Harvest's compare view ranks the candidates and diffs any two.

04

Choose what lands

Merge the winner at the exact commit you compared and skip the rest, or Abort while keeping branches for recovery. A conflict can go to a resolver agent, whose result you review before it lands. For GitHub review, explicitly request the draft PR handoff with the candidate's validation evidence.

Explore-only proof · real terminal capture · 00:30

Three agents. One selected result.

The recording shows Swarm fan-out, live slot status, candidate inspection, and harvest. It demonstrates Explore only; it is not evidence that all four plugins run as a pipeline.

Full suite capability reel (1:47)
RUNBOOK / 01

Your first Explore run.

Use a clean Git repository and a task small enough to review. Worktrees separate changes for review, but they are not sandboxes: write-capable agents are trusted same-user principals. The operator—not agent state—is the merge gate.

01

Install and prove registration

herdr plugin install StructuPath/herdr-swarm
herdr plugin list
herdr plugin action list
Ready: structupath.swarm is enabled and the five actions—fanout, status, harvest, abort, prune—are listed.
Not ready: stop here. Check Herdr ≥0.7.4, Git, Node ≥20, then inspect herdr plugin log list --plugin structupath.swarm. Do not fan out until registration is visible.
02

Choose how to open Explore

From Herdr's plugin actions menu, choose Fan out agents. Plugins cannot ship default keybindings; add this optional shortcut yourself: 

# ~/.config/herdr/config.toml
[[keys.command]]
key = "prefix+s"
type = "plugin_action"
command = "structupath.swarm.fanout"
description = "swarm fan-out"
03

Give every slot one bounded comparison

Start with 2–3 slots and a task like this; finish the interactive task entry with a single . line. 

Add retry with exponential backoff to the HTTP client.
Keep the public API unchanged.
Add a test for two failures followed by success.
Run the existing test suite.

Comparison criterion: among passing candidates, choose
the smallest diff with the clearest failure-path test.
.
If every slot fails immediately: fresh worktrees do not include ignored dependencies, .env, or caches. Add a reviewed plugin-config setup.sh or tell agents to install dependencies; then start a new run.
04

Review before selecting

  • Open Status; use 1–9 to inspect each agent and its committed/uncommitted counts.
  • Open Harvest and preview the diff for each credible slot. Do not equate idle with completion.
  • Run the candidate's tests and compare it against the criterion above.
  • If a slot is dirty, choose WIP commit, skip, or discard only after reviewing the snapshot behavior.
05

Harvest, or exit without losing the trail

Select the reviewed slot in Harvest. Use q to leave Status/Harvest without making a selection. Use Abort to stop the active run; Abort keeps branches and anything questionable.

Read the Abort, harvest, and recovery contract

Local Console · read only

See your projects. Review the next step.

Bring Git state, tool health, saved run observations, and browser QA evidence into one local dashboard. Choose explicit project and report paths; inspect freshness before copying the next command.

This public website is documentation. Console runs on your machine at a loopback address and has no controls that launch agents, approve work, push branches, or create pull requests.

Set up your local Console

Start with a labeled demo

From the suite site checkout, with Node.js 20 or newer:

npm run console -- --demo

For your own explicitly configured projects:

npm run console -- --config /absolute/private/console.json

The default address is http://127.0.0.1:4317. Saved reports remain observations; the operator decides what runs.

Deliver pattern

Assemble visible roles around a reviewed mission.

Conductor is for attended, agent-driven coordination: a human or trusted orchestrator directs task-bound role panes, reviews worker assertions and exact-SHA gates, and explicitly invokes deterministic integration, preview, approved local-ref apply, and archival stand-down.

Workers
Visible Herdr panes bound to immutable tasks and private report outboxes.
State
Repository/workspace-bound strict JSON with generations, locks, and hash-chained operation journals.
Integration
Complete producer reports drive deterministic zero-or-one-CAS integration before exact-SHA reviewer and validator gates.
Operator
A human or trusted orchestrating agent reviews unauthenticated assertions, diffs, tests, conflicts, and approval decisions.
02 / TRUST

Visibility and policy, with the limits attached.

Browser and Guard are supporting capabilities. Their boundaries belong next to their benefits—not in fine print.

Visibility

Browser

Launch local Chromium, attach to an automation browser, or share the same browser session as your coding agent. Select tabs explicitly in attach or launch mode and paste multiline text. Run repeatable desktop and mobile QA with explicit assertions and private evidence artifacts.

Boundary: the session is local and same-user, not isolated from another process that knows its name. Recordings require an agent-browser session and may contain sensitive content. QA proves only its configured checks; a recorded Git commit does not prove which build the web server served. Guide →

Text policy

Guard

Audit, alert, and attempt to interrupt command-like text visible in Herdr panes. An optional harness hook evaluates reported Bash commands before tool execution.

Boundary: pane interruption cannot prove prevention. The optional hook fails open when unavailable. Neither path is a sandbox. Guide →

Who supervises what

ComponentSystem providesOperator remains responsible for
Explore

Worktree fan-out, change counts, previews, guarded harvest

Task bounds, candidate review, tests, slot selection, cleanup

Deliver

Role panes, strict run state, live status, identity-checked harvest, preview receipts, single-local-ref apply

Work direction, branch review, approval, conflict handling, ambiguous recovery

Browser

Chromium launch, CDP attach, shared sessions, recording, and repeatable QA

Session privacy, assertion coverage, build identity, and artifact review

Guard

Text matching, audit, interrupt attempts, optional Bash hook

Hook wiring and fail-open limits, sandboxing, access control, log protection

03 / REFERENCE

Install by capability, not by bundle.

Each plugin has its own compatibility evidence, prerequisites, and trust boundary. Pick the capability your workflow needs and review its source before installing same-user code.

Ready workflow

Explore · Swarm

Parallel worktree candidates with review-first harvest.

herdr plugin install \
  StructuPath/herdr-swarm
docssource
Attended Stage 3

Deliver · Conductor

Strict task/report contracts, exact-SHA gates, and attended preview/apply. Requires exactly Herdr 0.7.5. 

herdr plugin install \
  StructuPath/herdr-conductor
docssource
Supporting visibility

Browser

Chromium launch, CDP attach, and shared agent sessions.

herdr plugin install \
  StructuPath/herdr-browser
docssource
Supporting policy

Guard

Rendered-text policy and an optional, fail-open Bash hook.

herdr plugin install \
  StructuPath/herdr-guard
docssource 
# registration and health evidence after any install
herdr plugin list
herdr plugin action list
herdr plugin log list