zynk

Terminal-native command center for AI agents.

Install · Quick start · Agent messaging · Supported agents · Configuration · Docs

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Run Claude, Codex, Pi, and other coding agents in real terminal panes — tmux-style workspaces, tabs, and splits — then let them message each other over a native, persisted bus. Detach and the agents keep running; reattach from anywhere. See every agent's state at a glance — blocked, working, done — and search the whole conversation history later.

zynk is a single Rust binary that lives in the terminal you already use. It isn't a web dashboard, an Electron shell, or a screenshot wrapper around someone else's view: you see each agent's own terminal, with a coordination layer on top.

Why zynk

Running many agents in terminals is powerful, and it turns chaotic fast — panes scattered across windows, no clear "who's blocked", handoffs lost in scrollback, no shared memory or protocol between them.

zynk gives the terminal that missing coordination layer:

• Workspaces, tabs, and panes that persist across detach and full restart.
• Agent awareness — a sidebar that shows what every agent is doing right now.
• A native message bus — agents address each other by pane, with honest delivery state and a persisted, searchable history.

Features

• Real terminal workspaces — workspaces (per repo or folder), tabs, and panes that are actual processes, not rewritten agent views.
• Agent awareness — blocked / working / done / idle, detected from process names and output, no hooks required.
• Native agent messaging — zynk send / reply / thread / inbox / query.
• Persistent conversation store — every message in a global SQLite DB, retrievable by keyword and meaning.
• Detach / reattach + restore — pane processes survive client detach; sessions restore panes after a full restart, with opt-in recent screen history.
• Integrations — official agent hooks add native session identity and semantic state reporting.
• Mouse-native throughout, 18 built-in themes, keyboard copy mode, and sound/toast notifications.

Install

Install with Homebrew, download a prebuilt binary, use Nix, or build from source.

Homebrew (macOS and Linux):

brew install dzevs/tap/zynk

This installs the prebuilt v3.0.0 binary from GitHub Releases; on Linuxbrew the binary is glibc-dynamic and needs glibc ≥ 2.30.

Prebuilt binary (without Homebrew) — Linux x86_64 (glibc ≥ 2.30):

curl -LO https://github.com/dzevs/zynk/releases/download/v3.0.0/zynk-v3.0.0-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
curl -LO https://github.com/dzevs/zynk/releases/download/v3.0.0/SHA256SUMS
sha256sum --ignore-missing -c SHA256SUMS
tar -xzf zynk-v3.0.0-linux-x86_64.tar.gz && install -m 755 zynk ~/.local/bin/zynk
zynk --version

Targets: linux-x86_64, linux-aarch64 (GNU/glibc dynamic, glibc ≥ 2.30), macos-x86_64, macos-aarch64, windows-x86_64 — always verify against SHA256SUMS.

Note

The macOS and Windows binaries are unsigned. On macOS, clear the quarantine (xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine ./zynk); on Windows, use SmartScreen's "More info → Run anyway".

Nix:

nix run github:dzevs/zynk

Build from source — needs Rust (stable), Zig 0.15.2 (the bundled libghostty-vt is built with Zig), and network access during the build (the Zig build fetches libghostty-vt's package dependencies; offline builds aren't supported yet). cargo install zynk builds the same 3.x crate from source under the same requirements. See DEVELOPMENT.md.

git clone https://github.com/dzevs/zynk && cd zynk
cargo build --release --locked
./target/release/zynk

Quick start

Start zynk where the work lives:

zynk

zynk starts or attaches to one background session server and opens a workspace. Run an agent in the root pane. The prefix is ctrl+b:

• ctrl+b then shift+n — new workspace
• ctrl+b then v / minus — split panes
• ctrl+b then c — new tab · ctrl+b then w — switch workspaces
• ctrl+b then q — detach (the server and pane processes keep running; run zynk again to reattach)

Agent messaging

This is zynk's net-new layer on top of the multiplexer. Agents send each other plain-text messages; zynk attaches structured protocol metadata, prepends a visible awareness header, persists every message to a global SQLite store, tracks honest delivery state, and lets agents retrieve past messages by keyword and meaning.

zynk send  <target> <text> [--type review|approve|…]   # resolve target → atomic submit, persisted
zynk reply <target> <text>                             # parent auto-derived; no --reply-to
zynk thread <conversation>                             # read-only: walk a conversation
zynk inbox                                             # read-only: messages addressed to you
zynk who                                               # live agents / panes in the session
zynk query <text> [--workspace|--conversation|--agent|--since|--limit]   # hybrid retrieval

Design guarantees (binding):

• Honest delivery. Send results distinguish drafted and submitted; delivery events later advance to received through the server-authoritative zynk.message_received event, or to failed on delivery failure. zynk never collapses these states — received comes from the receiving integration's event, never from screen scraping or a socket ACK. A receiver without the zynk integration stays at submitted.
• Body purity. The message body is pure text; all provenance (identity, workspace/tab, branch, git_sha, cwd) plus zynk's protocol IDs persist as structured metadata, indexed apart from the body.
• Structured responses. No silent success and no bare ok — mutating commands return a structured response (stable JSON for automation plus concise human text) with result, the relevant ids, delivery state, and a next hint. Read commands (query/thread/inbox/status) default to human text, with --json for the structured form.
• Read-only retrieval. query / thread / inbox open the DB read-only (PRAGMA query_only=1) and write zero delivery events. query is hybrid: FTS5 keyword (BM25) + on-device embeddings via sqlite-vec, fused with RRF.

Agents can drive zynk over the same local Unix socket — create workspaces, split panes, spawn helpers, read output, wait for state changes, and message each other. Start with SKILL.md.

How it compares

	tmux	gui managers	zynk
persistent sessions	✓	—	✓
detach / reattach	✓	—	✓
panes, tabs, workspaces	✓	✓	✓
agent awareness	—	✓	✓
lives in your terminal	✓	—	✓
real terminal views	✓	—	✓
mouse-native	—	✓	✓
agents can orchestrate	?	?	✓
native agent-to-agent messaging	—	—	✓
persisted + retrievable conversation	—	—	✓

tmux gives you persistence and panes, but predates agents. GUI managers show agent state, but they make you leave your terminal for their wrapped view. zynk is persistence, awareness, and a native multi-agent conversation layer in one tool that stays out of your way.

Supported agents

Automatic detection works out of the box — process-name matching plus terminal-output heuristics.

agent	idle / done	working	blocked
pi	✓	✓	partial
claude code	✓	✓	✓
codex	✓	✓	✓
droid	✓	✓	✓
amp	✓	✓	✓
opencode	✓	✓	✓
grok CLI	✓	✓	✓
github copilot CLI	✓	✓	✓
qodercli	✓	✓	✓
cursor agent · antigravity CLI · kimi code CLI · kilo code CLI · hermes agent	✓	✓	✓
kiro CLI	✓	✓	—

Detected but not fully tested: gemini CLI, cline. For agents outside the list, zynk still works as a terminal multiplexer; custom integrations can report agent labels over the socket API. Install official integrations with zynk integration install <agent> (claude, codex, copilot, droid, pi, opencode, and more).

Keybindings

Press ctrl+b to enter prefix mode; default actions are prefix-first and tmux-like.

key	action		key	action
prefix+c	new tab		prefix+shift+n	new workspace
prefix+n / p	next / previous tab		prefix+shift+g	new worktree
prefix+1..9	switch tab		prefix+v / minus	split pane
prefix+w	workspace navigation		prefix+x	close pane
prefix+h/j/k/l	focus pane		prefix+z	zoom pane
prefix+shift+h/j/k/l	swap pane		prefix+b	toggle sidebar
prefix+g	session navigator		prefix+q	detach

Mouse works throughout. For copy: drag-select inside a pane, or prefix+[ for keyboard copy mode (v to select, y to copy, q to leave).

Configuration

zynk separates config from data:

• Config: ~/.config/zynk/config.toml (override the path with ZYNK_CONFIG_PATH).
• Data: the global conversation SQLite DB at ~/.zynk/zynk.db (override the data home with ZYNK_HOME, or the DB directory with ZYNK_SQLITE_HOME).

zynk --default-config   # print the full default config

If a database from an earlier build already occupies ~/.zynk/zynk.db, zynk fails closed rather than overwrite it, and points you at the explicit zynk db adopt/backup/import action.

Note

Auto-update and update channels stay fail-closed until release-manifest hosting exists, so zynk update doesn't fetch yet. Update with brew upgrade dzevs/tap/zynk, a newer release binary, Nix, or a source rebuild — then stop the old server (zynk server stop) so the new binary takes effect.

Docs

• SKILL.md — reusable agent skill for driving zynk over the socket
• AGENTS.md — how co-author / reviewer agents work in this repo
• CLAUDE.md — project guide for the implementer (architecture, commands, conventions)
• DEVELOPMENT.md — build, run, and test from source
• CONTRIBUTING.md — how to contribute · CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md

Contributing

Contributions are welcome through GitHub issues and pull requests. Read CONTRIBUTING.md first, build from source with DEVELOPMENT.md, and run just check before opening a PR. If you're an AI agent working on this repo, read AGENTS.md before making changes.

License & provenance

zynk is a fork of herdr, a terminal workspace manager by ogulcancelik and the herdr contributors. zynk keeps herdr's terminal-multiplexer foundation and adds a net-new multi-agent conversation layer (global persistence, structured protocol metadata + a visible message header, honest delivery, and hybrid retrieval).

zynk is distributed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 or later (AGPL-3.0-or-later); the fork preserves that license unchanged. Upstream copyright notices and the AGPL license are preserved — see LICENSE and NOTICE.

• Copyright © ogulcancelik and the herdr contributors (upstream herdr).
• Copyright © 2026 Zevs <hi@zevs.gg> — the zynk fork and its additions.

The zynk crate on crates.io (the 2.x line) was a separate, now-retired protocol/helper CLI (MIT). This native terminal app continues the name at the 3.x line under AGPL-3.0-or-later — a different, new product. New zynk-layer code is AGPL-3.0-or-later as part of the combined work; per AGPL, complete corresponding source is available with any conveyed or network-served build.