Herdr is joining Y Combinator. The runtime stays open

A one-person project just got its big glow-up: Herdr, a tool that helps people manage long-running coding assistants, is joining Y Combinator, the famous startup program that has launched plenty of tech companies. Founder Can says the core product will stay free and open, and he’s building a team so the project can grow without collapsing under its own popularity. Sounds wholesome, right? Well, the comments immediately turned into a classic internet trust exercise.

The loudest reaction was basically: "Congrats... but uh-oh." One fan called themselves a "HUGE herdr fan" and then delivered the mood swing of the week: excitement mixed with dread that startup money could lead to commercialization and, yes, the dreaded "enshitification"—internet slang for a product getting worse as business pressures take over. That fear became the thread’s main tension: can a beloved open project stay lovable after investors enter the chat?

Then came the confused crowd, providing comic relief. One commenter bluntly asked, "wtf is runtime", which honestly may be the most relatable response in the entire discussion. Another tossed out "Okay, back to tmux it is then," basically announcing a dramatic breakup before anything has even gone wrong. Others got curious about the legal switch from a stricter open-source license to a more permissive one, wondering what problems the old setup actually caused. So yes: part celebration, part panic, part jargon roast. In other words, a totally normal day on the internet.