Massive lag and high CPU usage in v0.6.9

[tinysnake]

Is this a reproducible bug?

• I confirm this is a reproducible bug, not a feature request, idea, question, contribution proposal, or direction check.

Current behavior

I‘m using herdr in Windows 11 WSL debian trixie distro, and runs pi-coding-agent in herdr.

Every time I finish a session and create a new session, it just freezes. and I can see herdr sever using 100% cpu resource in top command. after about 1 min it will unfreeze.

Oh, I have pi-fff installed, and pi-fff refreshs file caches on session start, normally it just freezes a fraction of second.

And, select text auto copy function also broken in this version.

Expected behavior

herdr doesn't freeze. select text auto copy works.

Reproduction

Install pi-fff to pi-coding-agent and load a relatively large repo in pi.
Every time you create a new session, it freezes.

Impact

The whole herdr freezes, cannot click , cannot response to any keyboard event.

Environment

• Herdr version: 0.6.9
• Update channel (stable or preview): stable
• Operating system: Windows 11 WSL debian distro.
• Terminal: Windows Terminal
• Shell, if relevant: zsh
• Relevant config, if any: no.

[williamleong]

I'm experiencing the same with the herdr --remote

Just running pi (0.79.1) increases CPU usage for herdr server from less than 1% to 20-50% in htop across 3 cores.

To add on, CPU usage only starts going up when I start pi and drops back to normal when I exit pi, so I guess it's something to do with herdr's pi integration. herdr has been pretty great for me so far, happy to see it improve.

• Herdr version: 0.6.9
• Update channel (stable or preview): stable
• Operating system: Ubuntu 24.04 6.17.0-29-generic (remote)
• Terminal: ghostty
• Shell, if relevant: bash
• Relevant config, if any: no.

[sysilion]

I am also experiencing this high CPU issue (~200% on macOS).

Upon investigating the logs at ~/.config/herdr/herdr-server.log, I found an event spam loop:

2026-06-11T07:52:18.922044Z  INFO herdr::pane: agent changed pane=11 previous_agent=None agent=Some(OpenCode) process=opencode pgid=Some(78831)

This repeats thousands of times per second. It appears to be an event storm triggered when multiple opencode agents are active (I have 5 terminal sessions). Throttling or rate-limiting these state synchronization events seems like it would solve the problem.

Environment: macOS, 5 active terminal sessions.

[dzevs]

I hit this locally on v0.6.9 as well. The symptom matched the log flood reported above: repeated agent changed previous_agent=None agent=Some(Pi) plus high CPU / UI lag. It also made select-to-copy feel broken because the shared server/event queue was saturated.

I traced it to full lifecycle hook authority panes:

• sync_full_lifecycle_authority_detection_pauses() is called after app events and calls set_full_lifecycle_authority_active(true) repeatedly.
• The setter reset-notified even on true -> true, which rebuilt AgentDetectionPresence from None.
• The pty-first process probe then ran before the lifecycle-authority gate and re-detected Pi, emitting another None -> Some(Pi) state change.

I prepared a small patch in the auto-closed PR #565 / branch dzevs:fix/lifecycle-authority-detection-thrash:

• make the lifecycle-authority setter idempotent
• skip routine pty/process probing while full lifecycle hook authority is active
• preserve process-exit and release/reacquire probes
• add regression tests for both paths

Validation I ran locally:

• cargo fmt --check
• cargo test pane::tests:: -- --nocapture
• cargo test --bin herdr (1879 passed)
• cargo test
• cargo clippy --all-targets --locked -- -D warnings

I also rebuilt/installed locally, restarted Herdr, verified the running server binary hash matched the fixed build, saw no renewed Pi None -> Some(Pi) flood, and confirmed lag + select-to-copy recovered.

If this fix path is acceptable, please approve the first-time contributor path with /approve @dzevs; I can then reopen or recreate the PR.

refs #565

[ogulcancelik]

hotfix incomming, sorry! and @dzevs thanks for the pr, it's the correct fix, merged!

[kangal-bot]

Released in v0.6.10.

[tinysnake]

what about the select text auto copy broken issue? Anyone experienced it?

[kangal-bot]

Released on the preview channel in 2026-06-12-7ba4bfe90e7a. This is available to preview users, but is not in a stable Herdr release yet.