Support

Cowboy shows the coding agents running in Herdr on a machine you can reach over SSH, and lets you answer them when you choose to. This page covers getting connected and the few things that can go wrong.

What you need

• Herdr running on the machine, with the agents you want to watch started inside it.
• SSH access to that machine from your phone: a private key you can paste, or Tailscale SSH, which needs no key at all.
• socat or OpenBSD netcat on the machine. Cowboy uses it to reach Herdr's socket over the SSH connection. Most Linux and macOS setups have one already.

No Herdr host yet?

Tap Try the demo on the first screen, or on the hosts screen. It opens a made-up session that runs inside the app, with four workspaces and five agents, one of them waiting for an answer. Nothing connects anywhere, and you can answer that agent to see how it works.

First connection

• Open the hosts screen and tap Add.
• Enter your SSH login as the user, the machine's name or address as the host, and the port, usually 22.
• Under Signing in, pick how Cowboy gets in:
  • Password — type the password you normally use for that machine and tap Sign in and install a key. Cowboy signs in once, leaves a key of its own on the machine the same way ssh-copy-id does, and forgets the password. Nothing else is stored, and you can undo it by deleting that line from ~/.ssh/authorized_keys.
  • Key — paste an OpenSSH private key, if you already have one for that host.
  • Tailscale — nothing to enter.
• Save. Cowboy connects straight away and the home screen fills with your agents.

When something is off

• "connection failed" with a link in the message: the Tailscale check above.
• "connection failed" without a link: the phone cannot reach the machine. Check that the VPN is connected, the address is right, and that you can ssh to it from elsewhere.
• "host key changed": the machine's SSH identity is not the one Cowboy remembered. If you reinstalled or rotated keys, open the host's edit screen, tap Forget host key, and retry. If you did not, be suspicious before you do.
• Connected, but no agents: Herdr is running but nothing is started inside it, or Herdr itself is not running. Start an agent on the machine; it shows up within seconds.
• "output not refreshed": the last read of an agent's output did not go through, usually because the connection dropped for a moment. The last output stays on screen and Cowboy tries again every couple of seconds.
• Keys or prompts do nothing: input is off. Tap the lock in the top bar, or Enable input under the output, and turn it on. The bar turns amber while it is on. It switches itself off after ten minutes without a send.

Trial and purchase

• The free trial starts when you tap Start 3-day free trial and lasts three days, with everything included. One trial per customer.
• After the trial, the agent list and agent screens lock. Hosts and connection checks keep working.
• The unlock is a one-time purchase of $9.99, not a subscription. Buy it any time, during the trial or after.
• New phone or reinstall? Open Cowboy, and on the unlock screen tap restore purchases. Use the same Apple ID, or the same Google account, you bought with.
• Refunds are handled by the store you bought from: Apple at reportaproblem.apple.com, Google at play.google.com.

Contact

Email support@ducktype.tech. Say which phone and which version of Herdr you run, and paste the hosts screen log if it is a connection problem. The log holds connection events only, never your agents' output.