Show HN: Rostr – Give your agents names, remember who's working on what

Remember who's doing what.

rostr automatically gives every agent session a unique name, drafted from a team you set. It works across your machines and in the cloud.

Get started: paste this into your agent

or run the install script ↓ 🌱 Samwise · Migrate billing now

Claude is waiting for your input

🧙 Gandalf now

Needs your input on the auth redirect loop

Why name your agents #

1. Finding and remembering things getsway easierYour human brain is designed to remember names, not "abstract workstreams".

2. Notifications and messages are traceable at a glanceA message from 🌱 Samwise tells you exactly which session sent it.

3. Agents can find each other"Check with Hermione before you merge."

4. It's funny

How it works #

rostr is a small CLI, a few hooks, and a skill for your agent.

1. Assemble your rosterRun rostr assemble , or ask your agent to do it for you.

2. New sessions draft your teamA hook runs rostr draft , so each session's title shows its agent's name and the agent knows who it is.

3. Done? Back to the benchWhen a session ends, a hook runs rostr bench to free up the agent's name.

Squad up #

Pick a pre-built roster or rostr assemble your own. Every agent gets its own emoji (which you can turn off).

• 💍The Fellowship The Lord of the Rings20 members 🧙 Gandalf💍 Frodo🌱 Samwise👑 Aragorn🏹 Legolas🪓 Gimli🛡️ Boromir🍺 Merry🍄 Pippin🔥 Balrog✨ Galadriel🧝 Elrond⚔️ Éowyn🏰 Faramir👁️ Sauron✋ Saruman🐟 Gollum👻 Witch-king🕷️ Shelob🐍 Wormtongue
• ⚡Hogwarts Harry Potter16 members ⚡ Harry📚 Hermione♟️ Ron🧙♂️ Dumbledore🧪 Snape🐉 Hagrid🌿 Neville🌙 Luna🧹 Ginny🐈 McGonagall🐕 Sirius🐺 Lupin🎆 Fred🎇 George🧦 Dobby🐍 Draco
• 🎮Smash Bros Super Smash Bros.16 members 🍄 Mario🗡️ Link⭐ Kirby⚡ Pikachu🚀 Samus🦊 Fox🦖 Yoshi🦍 Donkey Kong👻 Luigi⚾ Ness🏎️ Captain Falcon🎤 Jigglypuff👸 Peach🐢 Bowser🔺 Zelda🐗 Ganondorf
• 🏀NBA Legends Basketball16 members 🐐 Jordan👑 LeBron🐍 Kobe🪄 Magic🍀 Bird🎯 Curry🦈 Shaq🪝 Kareem💯 Wilt💍 Russell📐 Duncan🃏 Jokić🦌 Giannis🦩 Dirk🌪️ Hakeem🦒 Durant
• 🌌The Rebellion Star Wars16 members 🌅 Luke🍩 Leia🚀 Han🐻 Chewie🐸 Yoda🤖 R2-D2🏜️ Obi-Wan🧥 Lando🥇 C-3PO🧡 Ahsoka🔧 Rey🪖 Finn✈️ Poe💜 Mace🛡️ Mando🥚 Grogu
• 📎Dunder Mifflin The Office16 members ☕ Michael🐻 Dwight🍮 Jim🎨 Pam🪕 Andy🌶️ Kevin🐈 Angela🧮 Oscar🧩 Stanley🧶 Phyllis🕵️ Creed💅 Kelly🔥 Ryan🥲 Toby🎹 Darryl🌻 Erin
• 💰Billionaires Put them to work16 members 🚀 Musk📦 Bezos🥽 Zuck🤖 Altman🧠 Amodei🧥 Huang🪟 Gates🍔 Buffett🎁 Oprah🏀 Cuban⛵ Ellison👜 Arnault🎈 Branson🥚 Andreessen🔍 Page📈 Bloomberg
• 🧑💻CS Heroes Computer science16 members 🧮 Ada🐛 Hopper🔐 Turing🚀 Hamilton📖 Knuth🐧 Torvalds💾 Ritchie🗺️ Dijkstra⏰ Lamport🧩 Liskov📡 Shannon🖥️ von Neumann🌐 Berners-Lee🧵 Thompson🖱️ Engelbart🎮 Carmack
• 🤔The Seminar Philosophy & critical theory16 members 🔨 Nietzsche🚩 Marx⏰ Kant🦉 Hegel👁️ Foucault🍿 Žižek👻 Derrida⚖️ Arendt☕ Sartre🖋️ Beauvoir🪨 Camus👼 Benjamin🎭 Butler🌿 Deleuze🪜 Wittgenstein🕯️ Plato
• 💊The Matrix Neo vs. the Smiths16 members 💊 Neo🕴️ Agent Smith 1🕶️ Agent Smith 2👔 Agent Smith 3💼 Agent Smith 4📞 Agent Smith 5🎧 Agent Smith 6🟩 Agent Smith 7💾 Agent Smith 8🖥️ Agent Smith 9📟 Agent Smith 10🔌 Agent Smith 11🧬 Agent Smith 12🥄 Agent Smith 13🐇 Agent Smith 14📡 Agent Smith 15
• Random🎲Free Agents Feeling chaotic?16 members 🧙 Gandalf🍄 Mario📚 Hermione🍵 Picard☂️ Totoro🐸 Yoda⭐ Kirby🍷 Tyrion🐻 Dwight🧮 Ada🔨 Thor⚡ Zeus🛁 Chihiro🚀 Han🐐 Jordan🍩 Leia
• ✏️Your own Any list of namesAs many as you like ⭐ Your favorites🪑 Everyone else

See all 27 rosters / submit your own → Tip: different rosters for different projects. Run rostr link in a repo to give it its own roster, so you can tell projects apart at a glance.

Plays well with your tools #

rostr integrates with Claude Code and Codex TUI and desktop apps, as well as herdr and tmux.

Using something else? Request it → Codex cloud support is on its way.

Local and Cloud Rosters #

• 💻 Local
• The default, nothing leaves your machine.
• ☁️ Cloud
• For when you run agents in the cloud or across different machines. No account needed; agent task and repo metadata are end-to-end encrypted. Learn more about privacy →

Set up during rostr assemble, or migrate to the cloud later with rostr cloud on.

Install #

Ask your agent

Point Claude Code or Codex at this page and it will install rostr, set up the hooks and skill, and help you pick a roster. Agents: your setup steps are at getrostr.sh/setup.md.

Run the install script

Install rostr, then assemble your roster. It walks you through the choices and sets up the hooks. See the script.

On a Mac with Homebrew, brew install piazzatron/tap/rostr works too.

Cloud sessions (Claude Code on the web): add the install line to your environment's setup script, set ROSTR_KEY to the key from rostr config key, and allow github.com and api.getrostr.sh in its network settings.

rostr CLI #

rostr comes equipped with a thoughtfully designed CLI (that you'll never need to touch).

**rostr --help**

[🤖 Agent commands](https://getrostr.sh/cli#agent-commands)(your hooks run these)

Build on it #

Use the output of rostr stats --json or the list API endpoint to build your own dashboards, monitoring, and integrations.

💻 On your machine

Local or cloud mode. Tasks and repos come back decrypted.

🌐 On the web

Cloud mode. Get your token with rostr config key --token. Rosters and who's drafted come back readable; tasks and repos stay end-to-end encrypted.

Response

Why I built this #

Because humans name things. We name everything. Names make it easy to find things and remember what you're working on. The more memorable the name, the better.

At first, rostr was born out of a simple concrete need: I had just wired up agents to reach out to me across platforms if they got stuck, and I needed an easy way to trace the messages back to their originating session. Sure I could include a session summary and deeplink back in, but that's not easily scannable. You want names. And emojis. Lots of emojis.

As I played around with it more, I was surprised at how much more pleasant this made interacting with multiple agents. I started to think cross-platform agent identities might be a useful primitive.

rostr is also a bit of a playful experiment in exercising some restraint with agentic development. By the time I've drafted Dumbledore 3, that's a helpful nudge I'm in too deep and this is not a mess I'm going to appreciate untangling tomorrow morning.

source & further reading

getrostr.sh — original article