Why CodeIsland?
Coding agents spend a lot of time either working or waiting on you — and you only find out by switching to their window. CodeIsland turns the notch into a live status bar for all of them: which session is thinking, which one needs an approval, which one just finished. Approve the tool call or answer the question right there, or click once to jump to the exact terminal tab.
It works with 30+ AI coding tools, installs its hooks for you, and keeps everything on your Mac.
Highlights
👀 See everything at a glance
- Live status, current tool and latest reply for every session; finished replies render as Markdown (lists, tables, code)
- The agent's own task checklist as a progress bar, Claude Code's "while you were away" recap, and (opt-in) model + reasoning effort
- Git branch and worktree on each card; group sessions by project or tool
- Claude usage stats, plus opt-in plan limits (5-hour and weekly)
- A pixel-art mascot per tool, animated by what the agent is doing
✋ Act without switching windows
- Approve, deny or always-allow tool calls; answer multi-question prompts
- One click to the exact terminal tab, IDE window, or tmux / zellij / Herdr pane
- Global shortcuts for approve, deny, skip and jump
- Auto-proceed for agents you already run in YOLO / Turbo mode
🧘 Stays out of your way
- Smart suppress: no ping while you're already looking at that session's tab
- Quiet hours, per-event 8-bit sounds, a "glance dot" completion mode
- Hides in full screen, steps around menu-bar icons, adjustable open/close speed
- Silence rules for directories you never want to hear about
- Mutes itself while the screen is locked or asleep; a failed tool call no longer rings the error sound, only a turn that dies does
- Opt-in follow-up reminders for approvals, questions and finished work you haven't looked at yet
🌐 Beyond this Mac
- SSH remote hosts — server sessions show up next to local ones
- iPhone & Apple Watch Buddy: Dynamic Island, Lock Screen, StandBy
- An ESP32 desk buddy over Bluetooth
- Pushes to your phone or team chat — Bark, ntfy, DingTalk, Lark, WeCom, Slack, Telegram — only while you're away
- Webhook forwarding of raw events for your own automations
- 7 UI languages; signed, notarized, auto-updating
Supported tools
Also covered: Trae CN, Trae CLI / Trae CLI Next, Qoder CN, Qoder App, QoderWork and Qoder CLI, Cursor CLI, CodeBuddy CN, Claude Desktop (Code tab, and Cowork), ZCode — plus any tool with Claude-style hooks, added as a custom CLI in Settings → Hooks.
Several accounts? Register extra Claude Code, Codex and Grok config directories (e.g. a second CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR) in Settings → Hooks; each gets its own hooks and status, and sessions, transcripts and usage cover all of them.
Knows where it runs: sessions inside tmux, zellij, Herdr or T3 Code get a chip next to the terminal badge, and click-to-jump goes to the right pane or thread.
Approvals & questions can be answered from the island for tools whose hooks wait for a decision — Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, Qoder, Qwen Code, Trae CLI Next, ZCode, OpenCode, MiMo Code / Xiaomi MiMo, Pi / Oh My Pi, DeepSeek Harness and others; MiniMax Code CLI for the 10 seconds mcode lets a hook wait. Tools whose hooks can't carry a decision (Google Antigravity, AiWork) are shown read-only, and approvals stay in their own UI.
CodeIsland writes these for you on launch (and repairs them if they drift); each can be switched off in Settings → Hooks.
| Tool | Installed into |
|---|
| Claude Code | ~/.claude/settings.json (honours $CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR) |
| Codex | ~/.codex/hooks.json — needs a one-time review |
| Gemini CLI | ~/.gemini/settings.json |
| Google Antigravity | ~/.gemini/config/hooks.json |
| Cursor / Cursor CLI | ~/.cursor/hooks.json |
| Grok CLI | ~/.grok/hooks/codeisland.json |
| Qoder (IDE and Qoder App) / Qoder CN / QoderWork | ~/.qoder/, ~/.qoder-cn/, ~/.qoderwork/ settings.json |
| Trae / Trae CN | ~/.trae/hooks.json, ~/.trae-cn/hooks.json (turn on global hooks in Trae) |
| Trae CLI / Trae CLI Next | ~/.trae/traecli.yaml, ~/.trae/cli/hooks.json |
| Factory, CodeBuddy, StepFun, WorkBuddy, Qwen Code | ~/.<tool>/settings.json |
| Copilot CLI | ~/.copilot/hooks/codeisland.json |
| Kimi Code CLI | ~/.kimi-code/config.toml (or legacy ~/.kimi/) |
| Kiro CLI | ~/.kiro/agents/codeisland.json — launch with kiro --agent codeisland |
| Hermes | ~/.hermes/config.yaml — approve the hooks once |
| ZCode | ~/.zcode/cli/config.json |
| MiniMax Code CLI | plugin at ~/.minimax/plugins/codeisland/ (honours $MINIMAX_DATA_DIR) |
| Cline | ~/Documents/Cline/Hooks |
| OpenCode | plugin at ~/.config/opencode/plugins/codeisland.js |
| MiMo Code / Xiaomi MiMo | plugin at ~/.config/mimocode/plugins/codeisland.js — |
Installation
Homebrew (recommended)
brew tap wxtsky/tap
brew install --cask codeisland
Manual download
- Download
CodeIsland.dmg from the latest release
- Drag
CodeIsland.app into Applications
- Launch it — hooks are installed automatically for every AI tool it detects
The app is signed and notarized, and keeps itself up to date through Sparkle.
This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗
