Glossary
what is an agent multiplexer?
TL;DR
An agent multiplexer runs several AI coding agents at once and gives you one place to switch between them and see which needs you, the way tmux does for shells. Some live in your terminal, like Herdr and Claude Squad; others are apps, like Tortie. Most add a git worktree per agent so they don't collide. The term overlaps with "agent manager" and "ADE"; what matters is whether the tool also helps you review and ship what the agents did.
The word comes from terminal multiplexers like tmux, which put many shells in one window. An agent multiplexer does the same for agents, and adds what shells never needed: status, isolation and review.
Agent multiplexer vs terminal multiplexer
A terminal multiplexer knows about shells. An agent multiplexer knows which agent needs you.
tmux and Zellij arrange shells and keep them running when you disconnect, but they can't tell an agent mid-edit from an idle prompt. An agent multiplexer reads each agent's state and shows you which one is working, waiting or done. Most also give each agent its own worktree.
Tools that use the name
Terminal tools and desktop apps both claim it.
The label is popular, and it covers quite different tools.
| Tool | How it describes itself |
|---|---|
| Herdr | "Agent multiplexer that lives in your terminal": an agent-aware multiplexer that keeps agents running after you disconnect. |
| Tortie | "A calm agent multiplexer with familiar IDE features": a Mac app with durable agent terminals. |
| Clor | "The agent multiplexer for Claude and Codex with shared memory": agents in Docker containers, steered from a hosted service. |
| dmux | "A dev agent multiplexer for git worktrees and coding agents", built on tmux. |
| Claude Squad | Not its own label, but the tmux community often calls it one. |
What to look for
Status and isolation are table stakes. Review and shipping are what differ.
Almost every agent multiplexer shows status and isolates agents. The differences are in what comes after: can you see a diff, commit, push and open a pull request from the same place, or do you leave for another tool? And does it run where you work, in a terminal over SSH or as a desktop app on Windows, macOS and Linux?
Pane calls itself an agent manager, but it does the same job as a desktop app, with a worktree, terminal and diff view per agent and git actions built in.
Related
Sources
- Corrections
- If anything here is wrong or out of date, tell us and we'll fix it and update the date at the top. Open an issue on GitHub
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frequently asked questions
By Parsa Khazaeepoul, co-founder of Pane. .