head to head · open source
herdr vs Graft
herdr has 42,848 GitHub stars, 3,353 forks, 337 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Graft has 9,736 stars, 883 forks, 217 open issues and last shipped today. herdr leads on adoption by 340% (42,848 vs 9,736 stars). herdr is written in Rust under Apache-2.0; Graft is written in TypeScript under MIT. herdr has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, Graft 9%. Graft was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 5 topic tags (ai-agents, claude-code, cli, codex), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| herdr | Graft | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 43K | ★ 9.7K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Rust | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-10-07 | 2026-10-08 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.4K | ⑂ 883 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick herdr if
- You weight community size — 43K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Graft if
- You want the Graft feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Graft fits your workflow better
About herdr
herdr is a terminal first runtime for coding agents — a single Rust binary that owns the terminals in which tools such as Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, OpenCode and Grok run, aimed at developers who keep agents working across local and remote machines and want those sessions to survive a lost SSH connection or a closed client.
read the full herdr overview →
About Graft
Graft is an open source TypeScript CLI and MCP server that builds a readable, file based knowledge graph of your repository so coding agents such as Claude Code, Cursor, Codex and Gemini start each task already oriented instead of re exploring the code from scratch.
read the full Graft overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is herdr or Graft more popular?
herdr has 42,848 GitHub stars and Graft has 9,736. herdr has the larger community by that measure.
Are herdr and Graft free?
Both are open source. herdr is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Graft under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between herdr and Graft?
herdr is written in Rust and Graft in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, herdr or Graft?
Choose herdr if you want the larger community (42,848 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Graft if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.