egoist/kero

What it does

Kero is a native terminal app for running coding agents and other long-lived processes side by side. Each Claude Code, Codex, dev server or test watcher gets its own session, and the sidebar groups sessions by project with a status of working, waiting, idle, error or exited. Sessions run inside a small daemon called kerod, so closing the window does not kill them; reopening Kero restores the panes and scrollback. Keyboard shortcuts and notifications help you jump to the pane that needs attention.

The terminal rendering uses libghostty, so Ghostty themes, fonts and config keys apply. Beyond the GUI, a kero CLI can start sessions, split panes, type into them, wait on them and read their screens, which lets agents drive the terminal programmatically. Remote hosts are supported: run the server build on a Linux box, cloud VM, Mac, Windows PC or WSL, and connect over SSH or Tailscale to see those sessions in the same sidebar. See the remote hosts documentation for details.

Getting started

Download the desktop build from the releases page and install it. Then choose Kero › Install Command Line Tool… so the kero command is available on your PATH. Start your first agent session:

kero new -n fix-login -- claude

To add a remote machine, install the server build there from Settings › Hosts. On Linux and macOS:

curl -fsSL https://github.com/egoist/kero/releases/latest/download/install-server.sh | sh

On Windows, in PowerShell:

irm https://github.com/egoist/kero/releases/latest/download/install-server.ps1 | iex

After the host is added, its sessions appear in the sidebar. More documentation is available in the docs.

Constraints

Kero is a desktop application for macOS, Windows and Linux; installation is via the release binaries rather than a package manager. The remote server installers are shell and PowerShell scripts that download and execute the latest release, so they require network access to GitHub Releases and the ability to run those commands on the target machine. Remote sessions depend on SSH or Tailscale connectivity between the client and host. The project is MIT licensed.

HotRepo's take

On the 2026-11-02 Go daily list, Kero recorded 17 new stars and reached position 4. That single snapshot is the only ranking record available here, so it establishes that day's result rather than a trend. The design choice that stands out is the split between a native GUI app and a daemon-backed CLI: persistent sessions and agent-readable screens are presented as first-class features rather than add-ons.