Early release · Windows 11

One terminal per identity.

hydra opens terminals inside named environments. Each one has its own Claude Code account, GitHub login, git author and SSH key, cloud logins and secrets. A terminal stays in its environment, and none of them can quietly use another's account. Use it from the command line, or from hydraui, the desktop app.

work personal client

hydraui with tabs for the work, personal and client environments, work's terminals listed on the left, a terminal showing git status, the project's README rendered beside it, and the file tree on the right.

Two ways to use it

Both work from the same environments in ~/.hydra: set one up in either and the other sees it.

hydra the command line

Create environments, turn tools on, sign in, and open a shell in any of them from your usual terminal.

PowerShell

PS> hydra env new work
PS> hydra add github work
PS> hydra shell work
[work] PS> gh api user --jq .login
work-user

Folders bound to an environment, with guards that stop the wrong account
Logins borrowed between environments
Secrets from Windows Credential Manager

CLI guide →

hydraui the desktop app

A terminal app built around environments: every environment gets a tab, coloured to match, with its terminals listed beside it and already signed in.

hydraui showing a side-by-side diff of a changed file next to the file tree.

An environment per tab, its terminals in a list, saved layouts
File tree with git changes, diffs and a file pane
Quick open, search in files, clickable paths
Each environment's accounts at a glance

App guide →

How environments work

Most command-line tools read their login from a folder you can move with an environment variable: Claude Code uses CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR, the GitHub CLI GH_CONFIG_DIR, git GIT_CONFIG_GLOBAL. hydra keeps a separate set of those folders for each environment and starts every terminal with them already set.

Separate logins

Each environment signs in to each tool on its own, so commits, pushes and Claude Code sessions always use that environment's account.

Folders know their environment

Bind a folder and terminals opened there use its environment. In the CLI, guards block git commit, git push and gh write commands from the wrong one.

Share when you mean to

An environment can borrow another's login for one tool, and Claude Code's skills, plugins and settings stay shared.

Install

Download the installer hydra + hydraui

New to hydra? Getting started walks you from install to Claude at work in about ten minutes.

Portable: hydraui.exe · hydra.exe

The installer puts both apps in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\hydra for you alone, with no admin prompt: hydraui in the Start menu, hydra on your PATH, and hydra init done. Uninstall it from Settings → Apps; your environments in ~/.hydra stay.
Portable: single files from the latest release, each with a .sha256 beside it. Rename to hydraui.exe / hydra.exe and run from anywhere; put hydra.exe on your PATH and run hydra init yourself.
Updates: hydraui's title bar shows Update hydra when a release is out and updates both apps; hydra update updates hydra.exe on its own from the command line.

To build from source, install Rust from rustup.rs, clone github.com/davojc/hydra and run cargo build --release.