{"slug": "rex", "name": "Rex", "category": "terminal", "category_name": "Terminal and shell", "description": "", "recommenders": 1, "commenters": 4, "warners": 0, "score": 1.099, "rising": 1.0, "first": "2026-10-27", "latest": "2026-10-30", "why": "", "why_is_quote": false, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 1, "neutral": 2, "compare": 1, "warn": 0}, "spark": [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1], "listed": false, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "", "icon": false, "domain": null, "github_repo": "github.com/peterkelly/rex", "official_url": "https://github.com/peterkelly/rex", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["Rex", "rex"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 804206146, "item_id": 50262884, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50262884", "by": "selectnull", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Rex will allow me to use my old workflow again.", "excerpt": "At this point, I'm really looking forward to Rex. I've been a laggard in switching to Ghostty because I used WezTerm and wrote a plugin to customize it to my liking. I switched to Ghostty just because I got tired of nothing happening in the WezTerm land and wanted to try something different. Rex will allow me to use my old workflow again.", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}]}], "caveats": [], "who": [], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["managing coding agents", "persistent service on remote computers", "scriptable terminal", "terminal emulator"], "compared": [{"slug": "ghostty", "name": "Ghostty", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "wezterm", "name": "WezTerm", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "herdr", "name": "herdr", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [{"id": 768179440, "item_id": 48011215, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48011215", "by": "peterkelly", "date": "2026-05-04", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I recommend checking out https://github.com/peterkelly/rex and also my PhD thesis on the topic", "excerpt": "I've always been of the view that for a workflow language, you should use a proper, turing-complete functional language which gives you all the usual flexiblity for transformations on intermediate data, while also supporting things like automatic parallelisation of things like external, compute-intensive tasks. I recommend checking out https://github.com/peterkelly/rex and also my PhD thesis on the topic https://www.", "context": "wrote PhD thesis on workflow languages", "use_case": "workflow language", "switched_from": "", "story": "DAG Workflow Engine"}], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50298436", "title": "Herdr has released native app", "mentions": 3}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50261998", "title": "Ghostty 1.4", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48007880", "title": "DAG Workflow Engine", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {}, "2026-07": {}, "2026-08": {}, "2026-09": {}, "2026-10": {"recommend": 1, "neutral": 2, "compare": 1}}, "quotes": [{"id": 804965889, "item_id": 50310368, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50310368", "by": "threecheese", "date": "2026-10-30", "stance": "compare", "quote": "Rex has the polish, attention to detail, and attention to performance.", "excerpt": "Right now the new herdr has more ... just more. Rex has the polish, attention to detail, and attention to performance. They both follow the same \"gui with a cli to manage the engine which owns the PTYs, has some interaction protocol, wraps coding agent interfaces, and you can connect to remote machines\" model. Unfortunately they are both GUI only atm and so I'm still using herdr-tui over ssh until it breaks or we get", "context": "", "use_case": "managing coding agents", "switched_from": "", "story": "Herdr has released native app"}, {"id": 804808529, "item_id": 50300533, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50300533", "by": "77ko", "date": "2026-10-30", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "also using rex", "excerpt": "It depends on use cases. I have multiple projects running in different locations/timezones - so I don't often need to have an agent running on a pc elsewhere - but just being able to smartly use herdr (also using rex) to set up a persistent service on those computers removes all the friction which used to exist with ssh keys and other things. So I could do all these things before, tools like herdr make it easier, smo", "context": "", "use_case": "persistent service on remote computers", "switched_from": "", "story": "Herdr has released native app"}, {"id": 804807456, "item_id": 50300466, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50300466", "by": "lexoj", "date": "2026-10-30", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use Rex but haven\u2019t tried herdr", "excerpt": "How does it compare to Rex? (I use Rex but haven\u2019t tried herdr so cant compare yet)", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Herdr has released native app"}, {"id": 804334562, "item_id": 50270910, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50270910", "by": "selectnull", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Based on the Rex docs, I will be able to make it work for me the way I used WezTerm before the switch.", "excerpt": "I feel fine after the switch. That says a lot because I really liked WezTerm (I was sponsoring Wez on github because of it) and I still do. But, the development stopped to a crawl, Wez has other priorities (obviously) and it was time for me to find an alternative. Ghostty is fine, but I want a scripting language for my terminal - I don't need much, but those few little things mean a lot to me. Based on the Rex docs, ", "context": "", "use_case": "scriptable terminal", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}, {"id": 804206146, "item_id": 50262884, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50262884", "by": "selectnull", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Rex will allow me to use my old workflow again.", "excerpt": "At this point, I'm really looking forward to Rex. I've been a laggard in switching to Ghostty because I used WezTerm and wrote a plugin to customize it to my liking. I switched to Ghostty just because I got tired of nothing happening in the WezTerm land and wanted to try something different. Rex will allow me to use my old workflow again.", "context": "", "use_case": "terminal emulator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ghostty 1.4"}]}