Coucou
A tiny friend that lives in your Mac's notch — or at the top of your screen on Windows and Linux — and keeps an eye on your AI coding agent sessions.
Approve permissions, watch your agents work, drop a file, chat with Claude — all without leaving what you're doing.
This is an unofficial, non-commercial fork of Coucou by Louis Raillé, built for personal use and feedback — not affiliated with or endorsed by the original author. The character is being renamed from "Mochi" to "Wato"; its design, icon and sounds are still the original project's for now (see LICENSE-ASSETS.md).
Why
Some studios showed off gorgeous notch companions… and never let anyone use them.
Coucou is the open version. Every line of code, every animation, every sound — free to use, read, fork and remix.
Meet Wato: a soft little squircle with big eyes that pops out of your notch, waves hello, follows your cursor with its eyes, gets annoyed when you poke it (and dizzy if you insist), and tells you the moment Claude Code needs you.
Features
- 🤖 Claude Code, Gemini CLI, Antigravity and other agents, live — see every session in your notch: what it reads, edits and runs, step by step. Tag a hook payload with
coucou_agent to give any agent its own pill (see docs/AGENTS.md). Finished? Wato does a happy little jump. Cursor and Codex pills are coming soon.
- ✅ Approve from the notch — Claude Code permission requests show up with Allow / Deny. One click, back to work.
- 🧑💻 Jump to the right terminal — open the exact terminal window of a session (macOS).
- 💬 Chat with Claude, or with Gemini and OpenAI models using your own keys (Gemini and OpenAI: macOS) — click the model name above the chat box to switch provider and pick a model; the list comes from each API account.
- 📋 Declare the tools you use — open Settings → Active pills and choose which coding tools, agents and AI providers show up in the island. VS Code is always there; toggle Gemini CLI, Antigravity, Anthropic, Google AI, OpenAI and more. Check Cursor or Codex and you can make it your main pill, the one in the big card (macOS).
- 📎 Drop a file on the notch — Wato turns into a box and swallows it, then ask a question about it or send it by email (email: macOS, Mail.app).
- 🪟 Drag Wato onto any window — attach that window as context for Claude (macOS).
- 🔌 Integrations — Stripe payments, n8n workflows, GitHub, Vercel deployments, Resend emails, Notion, Cal.com. Each one gets its own little colored Wato.
- 🎭 A real character — idle breathing, blinks, eyes on a sphere that follow your mouse, emotes, 28 handcrafted sounds, a greeting on launch.
- 🫥 Invisible when idle — hides away when nothing is running, peeks out when you hover the notch (the top edge of the screen on Windows and Linux).
- 🖥️ Any Mac, notch or not — on an iMac, a Mac mini, or a MacBook with its lid closed on an external display, Wato sits in a small bar at the top of the screen.
- 🔒 Private by design — no telemetry, no account. Keys live in your macOS Keychain, Windows Credential Manager or Linux Secret Service (GNOME Keyring, KWallet). The app only talks to the services you plug in.
Install
Download for macOS
- Grab the latest
Coucou.zip from Releases.
- Unzip and move Coucou.app to
/Applications.
- Launch. This build isn't notarized by Apple yet, so the first time macOS says it can't verify the developer: open System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll down and click Open Anyway (only once).
Windows
The Windows installer is temporarily unavailable. Microsoft Defender wrongly
flags the unsigned installer as malware; a false-positive report is under review
at Microsoft and the installer will come back once it is cleared and signed.
Until then you can build it from source.
There is no notch on a PC, so the island slides out of the top edge of the screen
instead of hiding inside one. Two pills are Windows-only extras: system vitals
(CPU, RAM, battery — no key needed) and now playing (title/artist from
Spotify, your browser, anything with media controls). See
windows/README.md for the rest of the differences.
Linux
The first Linux build is out as a beta: download it from Coucou for Linux 0.1.1 (beta), x86_64 only for now. Later versions will be in Releases under linux-v* tags.
- AppImage (any distribution):
chmod +x Coucou-Linux-*.AppImage, then run it.
- Debian / Ubuntu:
sudo apt install ./Coucou-Linux-*.deb
- Fedora / openSUSE:
sudo dnf install ./Coucou-Linux-*.rpm
Check a download with sha256sum -c SHA256SUMS --ignore-missing. Gemini CLI, Antigravity and the Google AI and OpenAI chat are macOS only for now.
The island sits on the top edge on compositors with layer-shell — COSMIC, KDE
Plasma, Hyprland, Sway and other wlroots compositors. GNOME has no layer-shell,
so there it opens as a regular window. See windows/README.md.
Build from source
macOS — requirements: macOS 15+, Xcode 16+, XcodeGen.
brew install xcodegen
git clone https://github.com/Louis-CFM/coucou.git
cd coucou/NotchBuddy
xcodegen
open NotchBuddy.xcodeproj # then ⌘R
Windows — requirements: Rust, Node 20+, MSVC build tools.
git clone https://github.com/Louis-CFM/coucou.git
cd coucou/windows
npm install
npm run pack # installer lands in windows/release/
Linux — requirements: Rust, Node 20+, and the WebKitGTK,
gtk-layer-shell and appindicator development packages (Debian/Ubuntu names below).
sudo apt install build-essential pkg-config \
libwebkit2gtk-4.1-dev libgtk-layer-shell-dev libayatana-appindicator3-dev \
librsvg2-dev libssl-dev libdbus-1-dev patchelf \
gstreamer1.0-plugins-base gstreamer1.0-plugins-good
git clone https://github.com/Louis-CFM/coucou.git
cd coucou/windows
npm install
npm run pack # AppImage, .deb and .rpm land in windows/release/
Setup
Click the Coucou icon in the menu bar (macOS) or in the system tray (Windows, Linux) → Settings…
| What | Why | Where the key goes |
|---|
| Claude Code hooks | live sessions and approvals | Install hooks — Coucou backs up ~/.claude/settings.json, merges its hooks and shows you the diff before writing anything |
| Gemini CLI hooks (macOS) | Gemini CLI sessions in the island | Install hooks in Settings → Gemini CLI — backs up ~/.gemini/settings.json |
| Antigravity (agy) hooks (macOS) | agy sessions in the island | Install hooks in Settings → Antigravity — backs up ~/.gemini/config/hooks.json |
| Anthropic API key | chat and questions about files | Settings → Anthropic API · Keychain / Windows Credential Manager / Secret Service |
| Google AI API key (macOS) | chat with Google AI (Gemini) | Settings → Chat — other providers · Keychain |
| OpenAI API key (macOS) | chat with OpenAI | Settings → Chat — other providers · Keychain |
| Active pills (macOS) | choose which tools and agents appear in the island | Settings → Active pills |
| Stripe, n8n, GitHub, Vercel, Resend, Notion, Cal.com | the service pills | Keychain / Windows Credential Manager / Secret Service, all optional |
If Coucou isn't running, the hook exits immediately: Claude Code is never blocked.
Things to try
| Do this | Wato does that |
|---|
| Hover the notch (top edge on Windows and Linux) | peeks out and says hi 👋 |
| Click it | opens |
| Hover Wato | blinks, eyes grow |
| Click Wato | squish + annoyed |
| Click 3 times fast | 😵💫 dizzy for a few seconds |
| Drag a file onto the island | turns into a box and swallows it |
| Drag Wato onto a window (macOS) | attaches it as context |
| Click the model name above the chat box (macOS) | switch AI provider or model |
How it works
macOS
- Island: a borderless
NSPanel hugging the notch, driven by a small state machine (hidden → petit → home).
- Character: drawn in SwiftUI
Canvas + TimelineView at 60 fps — squircle body, eyes projected on a sphere, spring animations. No Rive, no Lottie, no images.
- Claude Code: a tiny
nb-hook script receives hook events and forwards them over a Unix socket to the app. For approvals it waits for your click, then answers the hook.
- Integrations: lightweight pollers, paused when nothing is watching.
- Declared pills:
PillCatalog.swift is the single source of truth — every pill (coding tools, agents, AI providers, services) is declared there with its ID, color and category.
- Sounds: 28 short WAVs played through preloaded
AVAudioPlayers.
The macOS app is native Swift 6 / SwiftUI / AppKit with zero third-party dependencies.
Windows
- A Tauri 2 app (Rust + TypeScript): the island is a transparent, always-on-top window that never steals focus, Wato is drawn in Canvas 2D with the same shapes, timings and sounds as on the Mac.
- Claude Code hooks go through a tiny
coucou-hook.exe and a named pipe; keys live in Windows Credential Manager.
- Details and differences in
windows/README.md.
Linux
- The same Tauri app as Windows. On Wayland the island is a gtk-layer-shell
overlay anchored to the top edge, and click-through is its input region.
- Claude Code hooks go through the same
coucou-hook, over a Unix socket in
$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR; keys live in the Secret Service.
Contributing
Issues and PRs are very welcome — new integrations, new emotes, new sounds, bug fixes. See CONTRIBUTING.md.
Credits
Built by Louis Raillé with Claude Code.
Inspired by the notch-companion concepts shared by design studios — this project is independent and not affiliated with any of them.
License
- Code: MIT — use it, fork it, learn from it, just keep the copyright notice.
- Name, Mochi character, icon, sounds and media: © Louis Raillé, all rights reserved — see LICENSE-ASSETS.md. Shipping your own fork? Give it your own name and character. (This fork renamed the character to "Wato" in code and docs, but hasn't changed its design, icon, sounds or the "Coucou" name yet — see CONTRIBUTING.md#licensing.)
If Wato made you smile, a ⭐ helps a lot.
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