JUST ARRIVED
A livelier office.
The latest releases gave the team a coffee bar, four seasons outside the window, a few holidays to dress up for and some moments you only catch now and then.
Every change, release by release, in the releases.
THE MENU
Looks like it came with the Mac.
Built like the system menus in macOS 27. Every session with its status, project and what it is doing right now, your plan usage as activity rings, and a small context bar that turns orange before a session runs out of room.
AgentBar sees sessions from the Terminal, the Claude desktop app, Cowork and Xcode. Subagents appear as helpers of their parent session.
Without hooks, AgentBar parses the Claude Code JSONL logs and infers the state (for example, a tool call that is not followed by a result for a while in a non-auto permission mode probably waits for approval). With hooks, Claude Code reports PreToolUse, PermissionRequest, Notification, Stop and so on directly, and AgentBar also checks whether the Claude process is still alive.
THE OFFICE
Press ⌃⌥A. Every session gets a desk.
A floating window where each session is a Memoji-like character. They type while working, raise a hand when they need you, head to the lounge when idle and look more tired as their context fills up. Fresh again after /compact.
OTHER MACS
One office for all your Macs.
Pair your Macs with a code and the sessions running on the others show up in the menu and in the office, marked with a small device symbol. Discovery via Bonjour on your local network, every message encrypted with the pairing code.
- Turn on Other Macs in Settings and enter the same pairing code on every Mac.
- Wait a moment. A Mac only answers after the other side has proved it knows the code.
- That's it. Only status, project, title and activity of sessions are shared, never files or logs.
SETUP
Set up in a minute.
No account, no installer. Just the app. Everything beyond the two requirements is optional and off until you turn it on.
Required: macOS 14 or later on Apple Silicon (built and tested on macOS 27), and Claude Code, whose local session logs AgentBar reads. Optional: Claude Code hooks for precise detection, a weather location for the real weather in the office, and other Macs paired with a code.
Install
- Download
AgentBar.zip from the latest release and unzip it.
- Move
AgentBar.app to /Applications.
- Allow the first launch. AgentBar is open source but not notarized by Apple (that requires a paid developer account), so macOS blocks the first launch with "AgentBar" can't be opened. Allow it once, either way:
Only the first launch needs this step. Later updates arrive through the built-in update window and are verified with an Ed25519 signature (key compiled into the app), bundle ID, version and code signature.
- Launch it. A small Clawd icon appears in the menu bar (eyes closed: idle, eyes open: working, waving: a session needs you). There is no Dock icon.
First run
- Notifications: macOS asks once whether AgentBar may send notifications.
- Precise detection: click Set up on the Precise detection card in the dropdown (or Settings → Precise detection). AgentBar adds small hook commands to
~/.claude/settings.json (a backup is written to settings.json.agentbar-backup). Each hook appends one status line to ~/Library/Application Support/AgentBar/hooks.log: no network, no prompts or file contents, no AgentBar process involved. Applies to Claude sessions started afterwards. You can remove the hooks again at any time from the settings.
- Usage rings: AgentBar reads Claude Code's login from the keychain (
Claude Code-credentials) via the security tool. If macOS asks, allow it. The token is sent only to api.anthropic.com.
- Weather: enter a location under Settings → Office if you want the real weather behind the glass. Without a location the office only follows the time of day.
- Jump to Terminal: the first time you jump to a session, macOS asks whether AgentBar may control Terminal. This is used only to select the right tab.
- Launch at login: toggle Launch at login in Settings → General.
- Language: AgentBar follows your macOS language, German or English.
Shortcuts
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|
| ⌃⌥A | Show or hide the office (system-wide) |
| ⌘, | Settings (while the dropdown is open) |
| ⌘R | Reload the session list |
Build from source
No Xcode needed, the Command Line Tools are enough (xcode-select --install).
git clone https://github.com/SH1FT-W/agentbar.git
cd agentbar
./build.sh # build/AgentBar.app
./build.sh install # copies to /Applications and launches
./build.sh snapshot # renders the office + dropdown as PNGs into build/
build.sh prefers a macOS 26 SDK from the Command Line Tools (the SDK 27 in the Command Line Tools lacks the SwiftUI macro plugin); override with SDK=/path/to/sdk ./build.sh.
Diagnostics: build/AgentBar.app/Contents/MacOS/AgentBar --dump lists the detected sessions and exits. Test a language with AGENTBAR_LANG=en or =de.
Versions
AgentBar uses calendar versions YY.M.N: two-digit year, month without a leading zero, and the number of the release within that month. 26.10.11 is the eleventh release of October 2026; the next month starts again at .1 (for example 26.11.1). Every release, feature or fix, gets the next number. Tags and release titles carry a v prefix (v26.10.11). The jump from the old 2.3.1 scheme to 26.10.11 is intended: the update check treats it as newer, so Check for Updates finds it as usual.
PRIVACY
It stays on your Mac.
- Local files only. AgentBar reads Claude Code's session logs (
~/.claude/projects), the Claude desktop metadata and its own hook log. No analytics, no telemetry.
- The token is only read. For the usage rings AgentBar reads Claude Code's login from the keychain and sends it only to Anthropic. It is never refreshed, modified or stored elsewhere.
- Open source. The whole app is on GitHub under the MIT license, and you can build it yourself with the Command Line Tools.
The only servers it talks to:
| |
|---|
api.anthropic.com | your plan usage, only while Fetch usage is on |
api.github.com | checking for updates |
api.open-meteo.com, geocoding-api.open-meteo.com | weather behind the office window, only once you enter a location; the location is rounded to about 1 km |
| Your other Macs | only if you pair them, on the local network, encrypted with the pairing code; only status, project, title and activity of sessions are shared, never files or logs |
CREDITS
Inspired by so-agentbar
AgentBar was inspired by so-agentbar by sotthang. It is an independent rewrite with a different design and feature set.
AgentBar is an independent open-source project, not affiliated with Anthropic or Apple. Claude is a trademark of Anthropic. Licensed under MIT.
