Attach to AI agents
If you run AI coding agents on a remote host under herdr, SigilTTY can find them, show you what each one is doing, and drop you into any of them as a normal terminal tab — from your Mac, iPhone or iPad.
herdr is a tool that manages AI coding agents on a server: it keeps sessions, workspaces and terminals organized, and knows which terminal is an agent and what state it is in. SigilTTY talks to the herdr command line over your ordinary SSH connection — there is nothing extra to configure on the SigilTTY side, and no separate protocol or port.
What you need
Section titled “What you need”- An SSH server profile for the host (agents are an SSH feature — Telnet and serial connections don’t offer them).
- herdr 0.8.0 or later installed and running on that host.
If herdr is missing, not running, or too old, the agents panel says exactly that — for example “herdr isn’t installed on this server” or “herdr 0.7.2 is too old” — with a link to the relevant herdr guide and an Open Terminal on This Server button so you can fix it without leaving the app.
Finding agents
Section titled “Finding agents”Right-click (or long-press) a server and choose Herdr Agents…. On iPhone, open the Agents tab and pick Browse Server… instead.
SigilTTY connects, looks for herdr, and lists what it finds:
- Agents grouped by workspace, each with a status dot and the directory it is working in.
- Ordinary terminal panes with no agent are listed too — attach to one and start an agent there yourself.
- If the session is empty: “No agents yet — attach to a terminal and start one there.”
Attaching
Section titled “Attaching”Tap an agent and it opens as a regular terminal session — a tab like any other, with your theme, your font, and snippets available. The first line confirms it:
[*] Attached — detach with ctrl+b qAttaching takes over the agent’s terminal, so the screen you see is the live one. Each agent maps to at most one session: selecting it again focuses the existing tab instead of opening a duplicate.
Status at a glance
Section titled “Status at a glance”Attached agents carry a status dot on their tab and in the Agents list:
| Dot | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Green (pulsing) | working — the agent is doing something |
| Red | blocked — it needs your input |
| Blue | done — finished, and you haven’t looked yet |
| Gray | idle |
| Faint gray | unknown — status could not be determined |
The Agents list
Section titled “The Agents list”Every agent you attach to is remembered, and the memory syncs through iCloud — attach from your Mac, reattach from your iPhone. The list appears in three places:
- iPhone — the Agents tab. Its red badge counts agents that are blocked or done right now.
- iPad and Mac — the Agents section in the sidebar (the five most recent, with Show All… for the rest).
- The welcome screen — your three most recent agents, one tap from launch.
A colored status dot means this device has a live attached session; entries known only from another device show a gray dot until you reattach. Remove an entry any time with Remove from Agents — records never expire on their own.
Files, right where the agent works
Section titled “Files, right where the agent works”From SigilTTY 1.5, the folder button in an attached session opens the SFTP file browser directly in the agent’s working directory — no navigating from your home folder to see what it just wrote. To hand files to the agent, see Paste and drop uploads.
Detaching
Section titled “Detaching”Press ctrl+b q in the terminal to detach (this shortcut comes from herdr itself). A detached or disconnected agent session becomes a dead session like any other — the screen stays, the tab stays, and reconnecting reattaches to the same agent. See Reconnecting.