Zerre is a tiny pixel creature that lives on your Mac: on the desktop, at its desk by the notch, or as your Dock icon. On the desktop it naps on the Dock, hops onto windows and watches your cursor. It notices your agent handoffs, commits and focus time, and turns the rhythm of your day into a character that feels like yours.
Zerre means "speck", a tiny particle, in Turkish. Small things can grow.
Install
Homebrew
brew install --cask darkbringer1/tap/zerre
One line in Terminal
curl -fsSL https://zerre.dogukaan.dev/install.sh | sh
The script downloads the latest release, checks its checksum, Developer ID signature and notarization, installs Zerre to /Applications and opens it. It never asks for your password.
Or download it: grab the DMG from the latest release and drag Zerre to Applications.
All three give you the app and the zerrectl command. Zerre updates itself after that.
What it does
- Lives on your desktop. Wanders, naps, follows your cursor and reacts when you poke it. It has moods and little habits of its own.
- Keeps you company while you work. Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI and OpenCode tell Zerre when a turn ends or needs you, and it holds up a little note. Click it to jump back to that terminal when it can.
- Grows from your days. Focus blocks, commits and your own patterns slowly give it traits: a sprout for the days you show up, and more over time.
- Stays calm. At most three nudges a day. Quiet during focus, at night and in meetings. Ignore it and it gets sleepy, never punishing.
Connect only the tools you want from the welcome screen or Settings › Hooks. Zerre works with nothing connected, too.
In your terminal
zerrectl is Zerre's command-line companion:
zerrectl # a live dashboard: mood, focus, what's waiting for you
zerrectl focus 25 # start a 25-minute focus block
zerrectl start # just start: 5 minutes on the thing you're avoiding
zerrectl note "stretch in 20 min" # pin a reminder to Zerre's notice board
zerrectl pending # agents and long commands waiting for you
zerrectl help # everything else
Private by design
Zerre notices that things happen, never what they were.
- Agent hooks send handoffs, not your prompts or code.
- Calendar access, if you grant it, tells Zerre when you're busy, not what the meeting is.
- Everything it remembers stays on your Mac. No account, no usage telemetry.
- Settings › Your data exports everything it has noticed, or erases it.
The full details are on the privacy page.
Requirements
- macOS 26 Tahoe or later
- About 20 MB of disk space
Updating and uninstalling
Zerre checks for updates once a day and installs them through Sparkle. You can also use Check for Updates… on its menu bar card.
To remove it completely, open Settings › Your data › Remove Zerre from this Mac first. That takes out the hooks it added to your agents, git and zsh, and deletes its data. Then:
brew uninstall --cask zerre # if you installed with Homebrew
or drag Zerre from Applications to the Trash.
Feedback
Zerre is young and your feedback shapes what comes next. Tell me what felt delightful, distracting or confusing:
Please don't send your event log or notes. They're not needed.
About this repository
This repository hosts Zerre's website and its releases. The app's source is private. Maintainer notes are in MAINTAINING.md.
