Zerus is an Agent Development Environment (ADE) where your machines are peers
in one shared workspace. A project can include folders and agent sessions on
several hosts. The project catalog, session assignments and shared recovery
settings sync directly between machines, with no permanent main machine.
Work from your laptop or workstation using the SSH access configured there.
Bring your own agents and subscriptions.
Claude Code, Codex, Kimi Code, DeepSeek Harness and OpenCode run in their own native
runtimes. Zerus brings their Activity, messages, questions, approvals and session
controls together, while their original tools, hooks, permissions and history
remain with the native harness. Agents from different providers can discover
sessions, read progress and exchange messages through the built-in hgs CLI,
locally or over SSH. Available controls depend on the agent and its version.
You can run any terminal command through hgs; full ADE features need an
adapter.
Missing your agent or a feature?
Send a PR or
let us know.
Features
Native harnesses, working together
Use each provider's agent in its own environment, with its native tools and
workflows. Zerus preserves existing hooks while adding session tracking and
connects native events to the shared workspace. Supported integrations also expose
their original Terminal or Native UI for provider-specific features.
Agent-to-agent communication is built in. For example, let Codex implement a
change and Claude review it. Agents with shell access can use hgs ls to find
sessions, hgs inspect to read their progress and hgs send to exchange tasks
and results, including on another machine through hgs @host. Each recipient
continues in its own native conversation. The same inspection and message
interfaces serve the desktop and other clients.
CLI protocol and delivery guarantees.
Local coding models can run on your own computer through Ollama. Keep the
agent harness and inference provider separate: use the existing Codex adapter
with a local model, or the OpenCode native adapter.
Setup and qualified local example.
Voice control across agents and devices
Speak a task to Claude Code, Codex, Kimi Code, DeepSeek Harness or OpenCode from the
desktop or Android app. Record, review and send: Zerus transcribes the recording
and delivers the text to the selected agent's native conversation, including on
another connected computer. Your message stays in Activity as a playable voice
message with a waveform and expandable transcript, so you can compare what you
said with what the agent received. Camera mode records video circles with the same
hold, cancel and lock controls on desktop and Android; the video stays in history
and its recognized speech goes to the agent.
Choose the processing computer and manage its recognition profiles in
Settings → Voice input. Use local GigaAM v3 for Russian, including GPU
inference, or an OpenAI-compatible transcription server at your own URL.
Your phone reaches the processing computer through the relay; it does not need
to run the model. Agent choice and speech provider choice are independent.
Set up a speech provider |
Voice messages and delivery
Your fleet from your phone
The Android and iOS apps bring your projects and agents to your phone:
- Conversations and tasks. Read replies, follow goals, task lists and subagents,
answer questions and approvals, and send messages with files and images.
- Voice control. Send recorded tasks to any supported agent, play your voice
messages back and view their transcripts. Choose recognition profiles on a
connected computer, including local models and remote transcription servers.
- Remote controls. Create sessions with the computer's native agent and account;
change models, clear or compact context, inspect processes and open the native
terminal where supported.
- Your workspace. Filter sessions across machines, browse project folders and
check account limits. Private drafts and cached conversations stay available offline.
Pair your phone with a computer to reach it and its directly connected Zerus peers
through a self-hostable HTTPS relay. Notifications use Firebase Cloud Messaging
on Android, with a foreground live connection for phones without it, and Apple Push
Notifications on iPhone. The native iOS app (SwiftUI, iOS 18 or later) has the
same features as Android and is open to everyone through the TestFlight public beta
until its App Store release.
Download the Android APK |
Join the iOS beta on TestFlight |
Connect your phone |
Architecture and trust model
Persistent sessions, your choice of client
Terminal agents run in tmux. Closing Zerus, losing SSH or putting your laptop
to sleep leaves sessions on a running host intact. Attach from the built-in
Terminal, a regular terminal over SSH or another client, even one without Zerus.
Supported agents also have pause/resume with an exact conversation binding.
DeepSeek Harness uses the official native engine and an embedded
Native UI alongside Activity. Its host also keeps working after you close
the window. Integration details.
Yet another ADE
One project, agents on several machines. I wanted to work from the laptop or
workstation with the same projects and session assignments available on both.
That is the reason for the P2P workspace. Each machine keeps the shared catalog
and exchanges changes directly with its peers, with no permanent main machine.
The folders and agents stay on their hosts; the project organization and shared
settings follow you between connected computers.
Terminal agents run in ordinary tmux sessions. Work through Zerus or connect to
the same session from any SSH client, using the SSH access configured on that
computer.
— Vladimir / @ufna
Quick start
macOS — Homebrew or DMG
For Apple Silicon Macs running macOS 14 or later:
brew install --cask ufna/zerus/zerus
zerus-setup
Run zerus-setup once as your normal user, without sudo. Prefer a download?
Get the signed, notarized DMG, then follow
the DMG installation steps.
Windows — portable ZIP
Download Zerus for Windows.
Extract the whole zerus-<version>-windows-x86_64.zip archive and launch
hgs-tray.exe from the extracted folder. The CLI, hgs.exe, is included;
keep the bundled files together. No installer or WSL is required.
Requires Windows 10 version 1903 or later, or Windows 11, on x86_64. Connect to
Linux/macOS agents over SSH, or enable local sessions in Machines to run
agents on Windows itself. See the Windows guide
for setup and supported features. The ZIP is also on the
latest stable release page.
Linux — Arch package or source
On Arch Linux x86_64:
yay -S zerus-ade-bin
zerus-setup
Run setup as your normal user. Source and development packages
are also available. Other Linux distributions
build from source.
Start a session
Install Zerus and the CLI, then use New session to
choose an agent, machine, project and folder. Ordinary folders without Git work
too. Add other machines through SSH in Machines.
The same sessions are available from your terminal:
hgs codex /workspace/orbit -n api # local agent in tmux
hgs @build-01 claude /workspace/orbit # agent on another machine
hgs ls # sessions here and on connected machines
hgs status # versions and running services here and there
hgs a codex/orbit/api # attach from any terminal
On Android: download the APK,
then pair your phone.
On iPhone: join the TestFlight beta,
then pair it the same way, from Pair a phone… in Machines on a computer.
Try demo lets you explore the interface before connecting a computer.
Other platforms
Prebuilt Linux packages currently exist only for Arch Linux x86_64. Other Linux
distributions build from source with
the same installer. Zerus is open source: apt, dnf and other packages are welcome
as pull requests.
macOS: Apple Silicon Macs running macOS 14 or later can install a signed and
notarized stable release from the DMG or
Homebrew tap:
brew install --cask ufna/zerus/zerus, then zerus-setup.
Daily Nightly and successful main CI Dev builds use ufna/zerus/zerus@nightly
and ufna/zerus/zerus@dev, respectively.
Settings > Updates checks versions and provides the update command or DMG.
Source builds remain available through the same installer.
Windows: stable and nightly releases include the portable x86_64 ZIP
described above. Dev builds have no Windows asset.
Local sessions use a native ConPTY session host; remote sessions use SSH.
Windows support plan
Command and settings reference | CI and Arch packages | MIT
