Kelpie Install
Kelpie

Many agents. One calm supervisor.

Kelpie is a terminal workspace for AI coding agents such as Claude Code, Codex and Cursor. Run ten or more side by side, each in its own native terminal. Turn on the supervisor when you want one agent to drive the others. You stay in charge.

Download for Windows x64 Download for Mac Apple Silicon
Version 0.1.0 preview · all releases

✻ Claude · ◎ Codex · ⬢ Cursor. Colour shows state; !! waiting means an agent needs you; ◈ bot means you handed that pane to the supervisor for a while.

Why Kelpie

herdr is one of the few tools that genuinely moved me. The first time I used it, I loved it so much I shed a tear. The more I lived in it, though, the more its small rough edges wore on me, and herdr only accepts pull requests from approved contributors, so I couldn't send fixes back. So I forked it. Kelpie is herdr with those edges sanded down, and a few new features and quality of life improvements on top.

Features

01

A supervisor that asks before it types.

Off by default. When you turn it on, kelpie agent watch / submit / answer / interrupt / reset / resume write only into a clean input box, never over your typing, and leave a receipt.

02

Confirmed delivery.

Claude Code, Codex and Cursor report each prompt through their own hooks, so "confirmed" means the agent actually got it.

03

Delegate a pane, for a while.

ctrl+b shift+a hands one write to the supervisor, or delegates the pane for 30m, 2h, 8h or permanently. A violet ◈ bot badge shows it.

04

Every agent in view.

Marks for ✻ Claude, ◎ Codex, ⬢ Cursor and π pi, coloured by state, with idle time, a stale marker after two hours (configurable) and "!! waiting" that clears when you answer.

05

Detach without stopping work.

A background server keeps terminals running when you close the window or lose SSH; supported agents resume after a restart. Six calm themes on ctrl+b t.

06

First-class on Windows.

Built and tested on Windows 11 and macOS; one Rust binary, no Electron. Runs beside herdr with its own config and state.

Supervisor profiles with confirmed delivery: Claude Code, Codex, Cursor.

State hooks (kelpie integration install <agent>) for 17 agents, including pi, Copilot, Devin, Droid, OpenCode, Kimi, Qwen and Grok. Detected on screen: 24 agents.

Agentic first

Kelpie is built for one agent running others. The supervisor is any bot that can run the CLI: OpenClaw, Grokbot, Dot, or your own agentic loop managing your fleet of coding agents. It is off until you turn it on, and you decide how much of each pane it may touch.

Supervisor mode with confirmed delivery

With [supervisor] enabled = true, the supervisor drives other panes through kelpie agent commands: digest, watch, submit, answer, interrupt, reset, resume. Every write goes into a clean input box and leaves a receipt.

Claude Code, Codex and Cursor confirm each prompt through their own hook, so a receipt means the agent received it, not that the screen looked right.

Delegation you set per pane

ctrl+b shift+a hands the next write to the supervisor, or delegates the pane for 30m, 2h, 8h or permanently. The pane shows a violet ◈ bot badge and border until it expires or you revoke it. Your typing always wins.

Host facts, for you and for every coding agent

ctrl+b i shows what the attached server actually has: OS, memory and disk, shell and its language mode, GPU and driver, Docker, WSL distributions, and the CLI tools on PATH with where they came from and whether something is shadowing them.

Every pane Kelpie starts gets the same facts as a file named by KELPIE_HOST_FACTS, so a coding agent can stop guessing whether sed exists or which find it is calling. Refreshes every 60 seconds; also a Host section in settings.

Install

Windows x64

kelpie-windows-x64.zip
  1. Download and unzip.
  2. In PowerShell, in the unzipped folder, run the installer: 
    powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\install.ps1 `
  -Integrations claude,codex,cursor
  3. Open a new terminal and run kelpie.

Per-user install to %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\kelpie, no admin rights. Drop -Integrations to add hooks later with kelpie integration install <agent>. The exe isn't code-signed yet, so SmartScreen may ask once.

Mac Apple Silicon

kelpie-macos-arm64.tar.gz
  1. Download and extract.
  2. In Terminal, in the extracted folder, run the installer: 
    sh install.sh claude codex cursor
  3. Open a new terminal and run kelpie.

Installs to ~/.local/bin and adds it to PATH in ~/.zprofile, no sudo. Ad-hoc signed, not notarized yet; the installer clears the download quarantine flag. Apple Silicon only.

KEYS ctrl+b is the prefix ctrl+b s settings ctrl+b t themes ctrl+b shift+a delegate pane ctrl+b shift+s close stale ctrl+b i host facts ctrl+b q detach kelpie to reattach ctrl+b ? all keys

Credits

Kelpie is a community fork built on herdr by Ogulcan Celik and its contributors. The runtime, the terminal engine, the agent detection and most of what makes Kelpie work started there. Thank you.

Apache License 2.0, same as herdr. Kelpie is not affiliated with or endorsed by the herdr project.