Lochan vs Petasos
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side β with what reviewers say about each.
Lochan
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Your coding agents keep working when you step away. Lochan is how you keep up with them, calmly. When Claude Code, Codex or any other agent on your computer stops to ask a question, open its real terminal on your phone, read what it did, and answer. Then get back to your walk. A CALM VIEW OF A BUSY HERD Every agent on the machine at a glance, with a line on where each one left off. The ones waiting on you always come first. - Tiles: the whole herd as a grid that moves as your agents do - Board: Blocked, Working, Done and Idle as columns you swipe through - Projects: agents grouped by the project they are working in ASK THE SHEPHERD One question, the whole herd. The Shepherd is an agent on your computer that reads every other pane. Ask it what needs you, what changed or whether anything is stuck, and it answers from what is on the screens, with a link to each pane it mentions. It runs Claude Code by default, or Codex, Pi, OpenCode or Grok. ANY AGENT CAN JOIN THE HERD Lochan does not plug into your agent. It opens the terminal the agent is already running in, so it works with Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, Grok, OpenCode, Aider and anything else with a prompt. A new agent works the day it ships. A REAL TERMINAL, IN YOUR POCKET Tap any agent for the actual session: full output, scrollback and a keyboard. MAKE THE KEYS YOUR OWN Two rows of keys sit above the terminal. Drag any key to either row, switch off the ones you never use, and add your own: - Text keys for the commands you repeat, like /compact, /usage or /model sonnet - Chord keys for Ctrl, Option and Shift combos, like your tmux prefix or Ctrl-R SHARE A SCREENSHOT WITH YOUR AGENT Pick a photo, take one of the screen in front of you, or send a file. It lands on your computer and its path goes into the prompt, ready for you to finish and send. SAY IT. CHECK IT. SEND IT. Dictate a long instruction, read the transcript, and send it only when it reads right. Or write it in a real text box, with a draft that waits if you get pulled away. RUN THE HERD FROM YOUR PHONE Start a new agent in any project, rename it, and close it when it is done. BUILT FOR A PHONE Lochan tells each agent it is being driven from a phone, so it leads with the answer, keeps replies short and batches its questions. PAIRED IN ONE SCAN Run one line on your Mac or Linux machine, then scan the code it shows. Your phone makes its own key, and it stays in the phone's Keychain. Nothing to type, no private key to copy. Save every machine you own and switch between them from the title bar. No account, and no Lochan server in between: your phone talks to your computers over SSH. Away from home you need a route to them, and Tailscale is the two-minute version. ALSO IN LOCHAN: A PRIVATE AI CHAT Chat with Apple's on-device model, open models downloaded to your phone, or cloud models with your own API key. Conversations branch instead of overwriting, and you can share one with a link we cannot read. Lochan works with Herdr, the terminal workspace for AI coding agents, on the computers you own.
Petasos
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Petasos is the iPhone and iPad app for a Hermes Agent gateway that you run yourself. Pair it by scanning a QR code, then chat with your agent from anywhere. There is no account to create and no cloud service between your device and your gateway. No gateway yet? Tap Try the demo to explore every tab on synthetic data. Start sessions and follow the replies as they stream in, with tool cards and plan checklists along the way. Approve or deny commands from the chat or straight from a notification. Manage your agent's jobs, and check host status, toolsets and skills. With the hermes_app plugin you also get an inbox, attachments and full-text search. The share sheet and the widget are included. Petasos needs Hermes Agent 0.22.2 or newer with the API server enabled. The free hermes_app plugin, available from the project's GitHub repository, is required for the inbox, attachments, search and pairing. Privacy: the app keeps one gateway URL and one access key on the device. Everything else stays on your own gateway. There is no account, no analytics and no third-party service.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is update cadence: Petasos at every 3 days against Lochan's fortnightly. Petasos also leads on iOS requirement (18.0 vs 26.0). On price, ads, in-app purchases and device support there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price Β· Rating Β· Positive reviews Β· Number of ratings Β· Update frequency Β· Ads Β· In-app purchases Β· Monetization Β· Best chart rank Β· Devices Β· Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Lochan ships an update fortnightly, Petasos every 3 days. Both last shipped on November 13, 2026.
| Parameter | Lochan | Petasos |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Update frequency | Fortnightly | Every 3 days β better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 26.0 | 18.0 β better |
| Further details β not scored | ||
| Size | 63 MB | 6 MB |
| Age rating | 17+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Purplecones, LLC | Lennart Grabowski |
In-app purchases
Lochan
No in-app purchases
Petasos
No in-app purchases





