Riding herdr's coattails, one person gets 1,900 stars in 50 days: Ovis and "approve the agent with one tap on your phone"

A Korean engineer thought SSH clients cost too much and other remote-control tools were too heavy, so he wrote a phone web version for herdr, the agent terminal he used himself. Within 50 days it had the most stars of the dozens of projects doing the same thing. Below: why it ranks first, where the stars came from, why the ceiling isn't in its own hands, and how to borrow the same move if you want the same stars.

A post "not written with AI"

On a morning in Oct 2026 1, "Show GN: herdr web ui" appeared on GeekNews, a Korean developer community. The author Hako (devswha on GitHub) opened with: "This post is not written by AI, so it may be a bit messy. I got tired of AI slop and wrote this myself."

He then explained everything in a few plain lines:

• Why he built it: "Reading a terminal on a phone is painful, I wanted to use it like an app with a chat interface"; "many coding agents don't have an app at all."
• Why not an existing one: "Moshi and Termius cost money; paseo and orca are too heavy; this is just a plugin for herdr, no separate app to install."
• What it does: the chat view and terminal view show the same pane; approvals and question menus are tapped right in the chat; when an agent waits for input or finishes its work, your phone gets a push.
• Drawbacks: "To get push notifications on the phone it needs HTTPS, I use tailscale serve" and "honestly it's still beta, lots of bugs."

Two days later, an AI news site covering it wrote "402 stars" with the count at 10-03. By 11-06, the repo, renamed Ovis, had 1,892 stars and 270 forks (GitHub, 11-06).

What it actually is

First, herdr: a tool for running multiple coding agents (Claude Code, Codex and the like) in the terminal at once. It was one of the hottest projects in the second half of 2026, with 48k stars. August announced it had joined YC. 9-07 shipped 0.9.0 for connecting multiple machines, and the launch post got 4,381 likes. Users tend to leave agents running on a home or office computer, and the problem is that once the person walks away, an agent stuck on "should I approve this command?" just waits. herdr officially built only a desktop client; on a phone you can only SSH in and type in a terminal.

Ovis came out 10 days after 0.9.0 and built the library in 9-17, filling a gap nobody else was covering. It doesn't move the terminal onto your phone. Instead it reads the agent's own session logs and renders them as a chat. Permission requests, questions, and plan menus become tappable cards, and before you tap, it checks that the menu is still on screen. When you need it, one tap switches you to the real terminal in the same pane.

Install with one line: herdr plugin install. It's a web app (PWA); add it to your phone's home screen to get push notifications, with no App Store review. When you're away, use Tailscale, an SSH tunnel, or its built-in end-to-end encrypted relay by scanning a QR code. MIT licensed, free, no account needed.

On 10-26, Dan Kornas posted an introduction on X whose first line was "Your coding agent needs input. You're away from your desk." The top reply said: "Tap-to-answer approvals is the key bit."

Same idea, dozens of people building it

"Viewing and operating herdr agents on your phone" is the most crowded direction in the herdr ecosystem. The official herdr plugin marketplace has 2,060 plugins in total (herdr.dev/plugins, 11-06), and open-source projects doing this one job are easy to list in a row:

Searching "herdr" on the App Store returns about twenty apps: Heeler, HerdrChat, Corral, Shepd, Bleat, Driverr, and Shepherdr, which launched 11-06 that same day… their rating counts are mostly single digits. Only the general SSH client Moshi advertises "herdr support," with 607 ratings (iTunes, 11-06).

One ring further out are "remote control coding agents" that aren't tied to herdr: slopus/happy at 24.5k stars, getpaseo/paseo at 23.2k, siteboon/claudecodeui at 14.5k. They wrap their own daemon to launch and manage agents. Ovis adds no layer at all; it's just a window onto herdr sessions, with the same pane live on the desktop terminal, in the browser and on the phone at once.

Why it ranks first

It changes the interaction. Most similar tools build "a terminal on your phone"; Ovis builds "a chat on your phone plus buttons." On a small screen, tapping to approve beats typing in a terminal by a wide margin. That's the key bit the reply pointed out.

It lowers the barrier to nearly zero. Free, no account, no store listing, one-line install as a plugin. The author's own "don't want to pay," "too heavy," and "no separate app to install" are exactly the reasons open-source users hit star.

Insanely fast. In 50 days: about 1,856 commits and 1,200 PRs, shipping almost daily, now at v0.4.x. Docs are very detailed, with a whole page comparing it to collie, Happy, and Paseo. In a race where everyone started at about the same time, speed is the differentiator: collie started two and a half months earlier and still got caught. Commit volume this high suggests the author is likely having an agent write most of the code.

Non-English communities first. The README is in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and English. The first wave went out on GeekNews, cross-posted to the AI board on Korea's DCInside, and someone made a Korean YouTube tutorial on using Claude/Codex from your phone via herdr × Tailscale.

Where the stars came from: the platform sends a little every day

The curve is flat, with no spike days (GitHub daily stars):

Since mid-October it has gained 20–70 a day, peaking at 10-17 with +70 on one day. The sources are roughly:

1. The herdr plugin marketplace, the biggest and most consistent source. Ovis ranks third by stars in the marketplace and is also listed under the "fastest growing" section. herdr adds 1,700 more stars a week, and new users browsing the plugin marketplace see Ovis. The marketplace sorts by stars, so the higher it ranks, the more people click, and the more clicks, the higher it ranks.
2. Korean community launch. The first 400 stars most likely came from GeekNews and DCInside. The timing lines up, but there's no data on who starred it, so this is inference.
3. Word of mouth. 10-09 On HN, under someone else's Show HN, a commenter wrote: "The first one I found was herdr-web-ui, fully free, self-hosted, PWA with push notifications, and the dev ships a lot." 10-26 Dan Kornas posted an introduction on X, and several developers posted on X that they use it to fix bugs or are building integrations with it.
4. r/herdr and the official herdr discussion board each had a post, and the latter has only 2 upvotes.
5. AI news sites and aggregators pick it up automatically based on stars, adding a bit of long tail.

No paid promotion seen, no Show HN, no big X accounts reposting it.

One number tells you what kind of growth this is: over the last 7 days Ovis gained 249, roughly 1,724% of herdr's star gain over the same period (15). It ranks first among herdr's mobile clients, and the author built it. Getting close to 2,000 stars comes mostly from herdr's own traffic. And it's cooling off: the previous 7 days were +339.

Its weak spots

• The ceiling is in someone else's hands. When herdr grows, Ovis grows. When herdr stalls, Ovis stalls.
• The official team could step in at any time. herdr 10-30 has already released a native desktop app (367 points on HN) and a standalone runtime, herdr-core. On Google Play there's a "Herdr Mobile" with the package name dev.herdr.mobile; whether it's official is unverified. If the official team ships a mobile client, this whole row of third-party clients will be in trouble.
• The author is building an exit. They renamed it to Ovis, moved to its own domain ovis.sh, shipped Mac and Windows installers, a TestFlight and Google Play beta, and an encrypted relay. They're moving from "plugin" toward "standalone product." Growth didn't change noticeably after the rename.

If it were you

Verdict: C. There's a clear playbook to learn here, but building another "herdr mobile client" no longer pays: dozens of projects are crowding this lane, the first place is taken, it ships every day, and the platform could build it officially at any time.

Who it fits: developers already deep in a rising open-source tool who use it daily and know what's missing; people willing to use agents to push iteration to one release a day.

Who it doesn't fit: anyone who wants to squeeze in one more herdr mobile client (you'd be the thirtieth, up against a rival making 1,800 commits); anyone who wants a project that doesn't depend on a platform and can grow on its own. On this path, the star ceiling is a small slice of the platform's traffic.

How to do it, ranked by how worthwhile:

1. Do the "Ovis" for a different platform. Find the next open-source tool that's just taking off, has an official plugin marketplace, and has an official gap (mobile, web, or some integration). Within a week or two after its major release, ship the first usable companion plugin. Three criteria: the platform gains over a thousand stars a week, there's a plugin marketplace sorted by stars, and the official team has clearly not built that surface.
2. Copy its interaction approach. Don't port the raw interface to a small screen. Read structured data (session logs, logs, state files) and turn it into cards and one-tap actions. This works for tmux, zellij, or any other agent orchestration tool too, though those already have general-purpose rivals like Happy and Paseo with twenty thousand stars, so you need a clear answer to why yours is lighter.
3. Fill the gaps it hasn't covered, and send PRs to Ovis directly. For example, that comment asking for the ability to set auto-approve rules from the phone. It has 98 open issues and over 8 outside contributors, so building reputation there is faster than starting from scratch.

How to get users. Getting listed in the official plugin marketplace comes first, since that's steady organic traffic. For the first post, go to a non-English developer community (something like GeekNews) and write in your own words about why you built it, why not an existing tool, and what the downsides are. Write the README in multiple languages, and include a page in the docs that directly compares you to competitors. After that, let others speak for you on HN and X.

When to be early. You need to move within two weeks of the target platform's major release. Ovis's repo was created 0.9.0 days after herdr 10, and the batch that came two months later is stuck at a few dozen stars.

What would show you read this wrong. ① The official herdr team ships a mobile client and Ovis's growth stops. That would mean the companion-plugin path is riskier than described here. ② The reverse: after the standalone rename, Ovis grows on its own apart from herdr (for example, it starts supporting agents that don't use herdr, or its weekly star gain exceeds 15% of herdr's). That would mean it's more than a free ride, and the approach is worth reassessing. ③ When the next breakout agent tool launches, a dozen companion clients appear within a week. That would mean this playbook is already saturated, and you need to move earlier or pick a different surface.

Data and sources

GitHub: the devswha/ovis repo, README, docs/guide.md, commits and contributors; daily stars (10-09 to 11-06); stars of similar repos (11-06). herdr.dev/plugins (11-06). GeekNews "Show GN: herdr web ui" (2026-10-01) and the DCInside repost. HN comments (2026-10-09). X: @DanKornas post 10-26 and replies, herdr 0.9.0 launch post. Reveneau (10-03,402 stars). App Store search for "herdr" and Google Play dev.herdr.mobile (11-06). Where the text says "inferred" or "unverified," it means inference or unverified.