hrd

Herd your repos. Run commands across them in parallel. Watch results stream in live.

hrd is a multi-repo manager for developers who work across many repositories and use both git and jj (Jujutsu). It keeps your repos organized into groups, runs VCS commands across all of them at once, and shows a live unified status dashboard — with full awareness of branches, bookmarks, remote tracking, ahead/behind counts, and conflicts.

Features

• git and jj as first-class citizens — both backends are fully supported with native status parsing. Colocated repos (jj on top of git) are handled correctly.
• Parallel execution — commands run concurrently across all matched repos, with results streaming in as each one completes.
• Live status dashboard — hrd ls shows a color-coded table of every repo's ref, remote sync state, dirty flag, and per-bookmark/branch badges, updating in real time.
• Interactive TUI — hrd (or hrd tui) opens a full-screen terminal UI for browsing repos, filtering by group or name, and dispatching commands across multiple repos with live streaming output.
• Repo groups — group repos for easier filtering.
• Live-resolved directory roots — track a directory once and new repos added under it show up automatically, with nothing written to config for the discovered repos.
• Three dispatch commands — git, jj, and shell.
• Shell completion — bash, zsh, and fish, with dynamic completion of repo and group names from your live config.
• Extensible backend system — new VCS backends implement a single interface and self-register.

Install

Homebrew (macOS/Linux)

brew install hugoh/tap/hrd

Linux (deb/rpm)

Download the .deb or .rpm from the releases page and install with your package manager:

# Debian/Ubuntu
sudo apt install ./hrd_*.deb

# RHEL/Fedora
sudo dnf install ./hrd_*.rpm

mise

mise use -g github:hugoh/hrd

Go install

go install github.com/hugoh/hrd@latest

From source

git clone https://github.com/hugoh/hrd
cd hrd
go build -o hrd .

Quick start

# Track some repos
hrd repo add ~/dev/myproject ~/dev/infra
hrd repo add -n dotfiles ~/.local/share/chezmoi

# Or discover everything under a directory at once
hrd repo scan add ~/dev
hrd repo scan add -g work ~/work     # ...and group what it finds

# Or keep a directory always in sync — new repos show up with no re-scan
hrd repo root add ~/my-repos -g personal

# Start the TUI
hrd

# Add repos to groups
hrd repo group myproject work
hrd repo group infra work

# Live status across all repos in context
hrd ls

# Run a command across all repos
hrd fetch

# Or just the ones you care about right now
hrd jj dotfiles log

# Arbitrary shell commands
hrd shell -- 'echo $(basename $PWD): $(git rev-parse --short HEAD)'

Tip: Group names are displayed with an @ prefix (e.g., @work, @oss) to distinguish them from repo names. The @ is optional on input — hrd ls @work and hrd ls work both work. @@none is a reserved pseudo-group matching repos with no group at all (e.g. hrd ls @@none) — the double @ keeps it from ever colliding with a real group name, which you also can't create (group names can't start with @).

Status dashboard

NAME        VCS STATUS                                                   
myproject   git main ↑2*  feat: add new feature (2 hours ago)            
dotfiles    jj  main ✓∅⇡5  config: update zshrc (1 day ago)              
infra       git feat/rework ↑1↓3  refactor: networking layer (3 days ago)
old-service jj  legacy ✗✓!‼  fix: critical bug (1 week ago)

Status symbols at a glance:

Symbol	Meaning
✓	Synced with remote
↑N	N commits ahead of remote
↓N	N commits behind remote
⇡N	Working copy ahead of bookmark (local)
↑N↓N	Diverged (ahead and behind)
∅	Local only, no remote
‼	Unresolved conflict
!	Bookmark conflict (jj)
✗	Remote was deleted
*	Dirty working copy
?	Unknown remote state

Interactive TUI

Run hrd (or hrd tui) to open the full-screen terminal UI:

• Browse all tracked repos in a sortable table.
• Filter by group with @ — type @work to show only work repos, or select individual repos with Space. [ungrouped] (alongside [all]) filters to repos in no group at all.
• Type-to-filter with / — fuzzy-match repos by name as you type; Enter keeps the filter, Esc clears it.
• Run VCS commands (status, diff, log, fetch, pull, push) from a single key press — results stream in live as each repo completes.
• The command palette (:) gives access to every subcommand without leaving the TUI.
• Shortcuts: S (status), l (log), d (diff), f (fetch), p (pull), P (push), @ (group picker), / (name filter), q or Esc (quit).

The TUI mirrors the CLI: the same backends, the same parallel execution, the same status parsing — just in an interactive, always-on view.

Command reference

hrd manages a set of git and jj repositories tracked in a config file,
letting you run status checks and VCS operations across many of them at once.

Run with no subcommand to open the TUI, optionally scoped to specific repos or
groups. -c/--config applies to every subcommand and defaults to
$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/hrd/config.toml, falling back to ~/.config/hrd/config.toml.

Usage:
  hrd [flags]
  hrd [command]

Examples:
  hrd                    # open the TUI across all tracked repos
  hrd myrepo             # open the TUI scoped to one repo
  hrd repo add ~/code/*  # start tracking repos
  hrd ls                 # show status of all tracked repos

Repository management:
  group       list repo groups
  repo        manage tracked repositories

Inspect:
  diff        show diff for repos (git diff or jj diff)
  ll          show status of repos with commit message and time
  log         show log for repos (git log or jj log)
  ls          show status of repos
  status      show detailed status for repos (git status or jj status)

Remote sync:
  fetch       fetch from remotes (git fetch or jj git fetch)
  pull        pull from remotes (git pull or jj git pull)
  push        push to remotes (git push or jj git push)

Run commands:
  git         run a git command across repos
  jj          run a jj command across repos
  shell       run an arbitrary shell command across repos
  tui         interactive terminal UI for browsing and running commands across repos

Additional Commands:
  completion  Generate the autocompletion script for the specified shell
  help        Help about any command

Flags:
  -c, --config string   path to config file (default "~/.config/hrd/config.toml")
  -h, --help            help for hrd
  -v, --version         version for hrd

Use "hrd [command] --help" for more information about a command.

Scoping and --

The git, jj, and shell commands take an optional repo/group scope followed by the command to run. Everything after -- is passed to the subprocess verbatim — repo names in the command are never reinterpreted as scope:

hrd git myrepo @work -- log --oneline -5
hrd shell -- grep -r TODO .

Without --, the leading args that match repo or group names form the scope and the first non-matching arg starts the command (hrd git myrepo log works, but flags like --oneline need the -- form).

Repo discovery

hrd repo scan add <dir>... walks each directory (default depth 5, tune with --depth) and tracks every git/jj repo it finds as its own entry in the config. Detected repos are not descended into, so vendored or nested checkouts stay untracked; hidden directories are skipped. hrd repo scan list <dir>... previews the same walk without saving, with --tracked / --untracked to filter by whether a match is already in the config. -g/--group assigns everything found to a group. Name collisions fall back to <parent>-<dir>; already-tracked paths are left alone, so re-running scan add is safe.

hrd repo scan add ~/dev --depth 2 --pattern 'api-*' -g backend
hrd repo scan list ~/dev --untracked

For a directory you want to stay in sync automatically, use hrd repo root add <dir> instead: it's a standing declaration, walked live on every hrd invocation, so repos added under it later show up with no re-scan and nothing is written to the config for the discovered repos themselves — only the root is persisted. --depth (default 1) caps how deep it walks and -g/--group tags every repo found under it.

hrd repo root add ~/my-repos --depth 2 -g personal
hrd repo root ls
hrd repo root rm my-repos

Status filters

ls, ll, the VCS subcommands (status, diff, log, fetch, pull, push), shell, git, and jj accept status filters that narrow the scope to repos in a given state (multiple flags are a union):

hrd push --ahead          # push only repos with unpushed commits
hrd pull --behind @work   # pull only the work repos that are behind
hrd ls --dirty --names    # script-friendly list of dirty repos
hrd shell --dirty -- git stash list

Flag	Matches repos that…
--dirty	have uncommitted changes in the working copy
--ahead	are ahead of their remote, or have local-only work
--behind	are behind their remote

Aliases

Define your own commands in the config and they become first-class subcommands — with repo/group scoping, -r, --interactive, status filters, and shell completion, and listed under hrd --help:

[aliases]
sync = "pull --rebase"
mkclean = "!make clean"

hrd sync @work          # git pull --rebase / jj git pull, per backend
hrd mkclean --dirty     # make clean, only in dirty repos
hrd sync -- --autostash # extra args append to the expansion

The first word decides the routing: git/jj pins a backend, ! (or sh) runs a shell command, anything else routes through each repo's own backend like the built-in subcommands. The TUI command bar completes and expands the same aliases. Aliases that would shadow a built-in command are ignored with a warning.

Exit codes

Code	Meaning
0	All repos succeeded
1	The command ran but failed in at least one repo
2	Usage or config error (unknown repo, bad flags)

Configuration

Config lives at ~/.config/hrd/config.toml (respects $XDG_CONFIG_HOME).

[repos.dotfiles]
path = "/home/alice/.local/share/chezmoi"

[repos.myproject]
path = "/home/alice/dev/myproject"
groups = ["work"]

[repos.infra]
path = "/home/alice/dev/infra"
groups = ["work"]

[roots.personal]
path = "/home/alice/my-repos"
depth = 1
groups = ["personal"]

[settings]
concurrency = 8

[aliases]
sync = "pull --rebase" # per-repo routing (git pull / jj git pull)
gpf = "git push --force-with-lease" # always that backend
mkclean = "!make clean" # "!" or "sh " prefix = shell command

Note: Groups are derived from the groups field on each repo, plus the groups field on any [roots.*] entry (inherited by every repo discovered under it). Group names are displayed with an @ prefix (e.g., @work) to distinguish them from repo names. The @ is optional on input — work and @work are treated identically. Group names can never start with @ (so hrd repo group myrepo @work stores work, not @work) — this reserves the @@ namespace (e.g. @@none, see the Quick start tip) for built-in pseudo-groups, which can never collide with anything you create.

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Contributing

Contributions are very welcome! Please open an issue or submit a pull request. See development instructions.

Adding a backend

Implement the Backend interface in a new package, add a Register() function that calls backend.Register(), and call it from main.go's Run() function. The interface is four methods: Name, Detect, Status, and Run.

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Related tools

gita is the direct inspiration for hrd.

Jujutsu (jj) VCS motivated creating hrd with first-class non-git support.

Disclaimer

LLMs were used to put together the initial version.