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.
• Repo groups and context — organize repos into named groups and set an active context so commands default to a focused scope.
• 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 (VCS is auto-detected)
hrd repo add ~/dev/myproject ~/dev/dotfiles ~/dev/infra

# Organize into groups
hrd group add work myproject infra
hrd context set work

# Live status across all repos in context
hrd ls

# Run a command across all repos
hrd git -- fetch --all

# Or just the ones you care about right now
hrd jj --repos 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 context set work and hrd context set @work both work.

Status dashboard

NAME         VCS  REF               MSG
myproject    git  main ↑2*          feat: add new feature (2 hours ago)
dotfiles     jj   main ✓∅           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
↑2	2 commits ahead
↓1	1 commit behind
↑2↓1	diverged
∅	local only, no remote
!	bookmark conflict (jj)
✗	remote was deleted
*	dirty working copy
‼	unresolved conflict
?	unknown remote state

Command reference

hrd [--config <path>] <command>

# Repo management
hrd repo add <path>... [--vcs git|jj] [--name <n>]
hrd repo rm  <name>...
hrd repo ls  [--group <g>]
hrd repo rename <old> <new>
hrd repo refresh <name>... | --all

# Group management
hrd group add <name> <repo>...  # @-prefix optional on input; displayed as @<name>
hrd group rm  <name>
hrd group ls [<name>]

# Context (default scope)
hrd context set   <group>       # @-prefix optional on input; displayed as @<group>
hrd context clear
hrd context show

# Status
hrd ls [--repos <name,...>] [--names] [--dirs] [--message]
hrd ll [--repos <name,...>]   # detailed view (alias for ls --message)

# Dispatch
hrd git   [--repos <r>] [--interactive] -- <git args>
hrd jj    [--repos <r>] [--interactive] -- <jj args>
hrd shell [--repos <r>] [--interactive] -- <shell command>

# VCS subcommands (use each repo's active backend)
hrd status [--repos <name,...>]
hrd diff   [--repos <name,...>]
hrd log    [--repos <name,...>]

# Shell completion
eval "$(hrd completion bash)"   # add to .bashrc
eval "$(hrd completion zsh)"    # add to .zshrc
hrd completion fish | source    # add to config.fish

Configuration

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

[repos.dotfiles]
path = "/home/hugo/.local/share/chezmoi"
vcs = "jj"

[repos.myproject]
path = "/home/hugo/dev/myproject"
vcs = "git"

[groups.oss]
repos = ["myproject", "infra"]

[context]
current = "oss"

[settings]
concurrency = 8

Note: Group names in the CLI are prefixed with @ (e.g., hrd context set @oss, hrd group ls @work) to distinguish them from repo names. The @ is optional on input — work and @work are treated identically. The config file stores group names without the @ prefix. on dispatch commands to run with a real terminal (pagers, interactive diffs). Interactive commands run sequentially on one repo at a time rather than in parallel.

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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.