Know what your agents
are doing.
Aurora Glass turns the top of your Mac into a status light for Claude Code and Codex. A light runs along it while they work, it turns amber when one needs you, and ripples when a job lands, so you can stop checking the terminal. The rest of the time, it’s a living aurora.
Free. For Macs with Apple silicon on macOS 26 Tahoe or later.
No permissions, and no account.
Live — move your pointer through it. In the app it is off until you turn it on.
Agents
Know when your agents need you
Set an agent going and get on with something else. The top of your screen tells you how it’s doing, out of the corner of your eye — whichever agent it is, and however many of them are running. Click the mark in your menu bar for each one in words: its project, what it’s doing right now, and the step of its plan it’s on.
Pick one to see it on the bar at the top of this page, and pick it again to go back.
Claude Code and Codex, in one click
Click Connect when the app opens, or in Settings ›
Agents. It adds itself to the agent’s own hook settings, keeps every hook you
already have, and backs the file up first. From Terminal it’s
aurora hooks --install, with --codex
for Codex.
Anything else, too
Builds, tests, deploys, other agents: anything that can run a command can set the light, or write a message into the bar. How.
aurora busy # working
aurora wait # needs you
aurora done # or: aurora fail
aurora say "Deploy finished"Whatever Herdr can see
If you keep your agents in Herdr, its terminals already report whether they are working, blocked or finished. Switch Herdr on in Settings › Herdr and every one of them lights the bar — not just Claude Code. An agent running in a Herdr terminal with hooks installed is still one light, not two.
Several at once, folded into one
Each session is tracked on its own and the bar shows the sum: amber while any of them needs you, working while any is working, and a verdict only once they have all stopped. Working and needs-you claims expire, so an agent you killed can never leave the bar saying it is still busy.
Fleet
Every machine, in one bar
Agents stopped fitting on one computer a while ago. There is the Mac you’re typing on, the desktop still grinding through a build, a Linux box, a server somewhere. Put them in a fleet and their agents fold into this bar along with the local ones, and into a dashboard you can open from anywhere.
It’s free, and anyone can sign up: sign in with GitHub and you have a fleet of your own.
On a Mac, from Settings
- Open Aurora Glass’s Settings, choose Fleet.
- Click Join Fleet. A short code appears.
- Click Approve in Browser, sign in with GitHub, and approve the code. Your first sign-in makes your fleet.
Do the same on each Mac and approve it the same way. No Terminal needed.
On Linux, or from any terminal
# no root needed; a Mac already has the command
curl -fsSL https://auroraglass.app/install.sh | sh
aurora loginIt prints a code and a link. Approve it in any browser, signed in to the same GitHub account.
Linux boxes count
The aurora command builds for
Linux as a static binary, x86_64 and arm64. A headless server grinding through a
job has no bar of its own to light, so it lights the one in front of you.
One bar, or a whole wall
The bar folds every machine’s agents together the same way it folds several on one Mac: amber while any of them needs you, wherever it is running. The dashboard is for when you want the detail — which sessions are live, what they have been doing, which projects they are in.
A machine sends what you let it, and nothing else
Joining a fleet sends states and their times. That is all, until you turn something on — one switch at a time, per machine, and you can see exactly what the next batch contains before it goes.
- States and times Working, needs you, done, failed, and when. Always, while a machine is in a fleet.
- Project folder name The last part of the folder, never the path above it.
- Tool names Which tool, by name, without what it was asked to do.
- Session titles What the session is called.
- Model, effort, branch, version What each session is running as.
- Token usage Input, output and cache tokens per API call.
- Your prompts What you type to the agent.
- The agent’s replies Its text answers. Never its thinking.
- Tool inputs Commands, file paths, searches.
- Tool output What came back: output, file contents, results.
Rather keep it all inside your own network?
The fleet server also runs on your own hardware, with your own sign-in. Point a machine
at it with the Server field in Settings › Fleet, or
aurora login --server https://fleet.example.com.
Ask
for the server while it is in early access.
SidePulse
The same light, off the screen
SidePulse is a small light that lives at the edge of your Mac — eight of them in the SD card slot of a 14- or 16-inch MacBook Pro, or two on a USB-C stick. Aurora Glass drives it from the same state the bar is showing, in the colors of the look you picked: a light running along it while an agent works, a slow pulse when one needs you, a ripple out from the middle when a job lands, two blinks when something fails.
Eight lights, taking their colors from the bar above. Pick a look and these change with it.
Nothing is streamed to it: the app writes a short program and the device animates itself, so it keeps going at the same rate whatever your Mac is doing. Switch it on in Settings › SidePulse.
Looks
Pick a look. The bar above changes.
Lots of looks come with it — a quiet northern sky, a starfield with shooting stars, a campfire, a slow glow. None of them is fixed: every one opens in the editor, down to its colors, its motion and its physics, and you can keep what you make.
Now running
Change it in the editorMake it yours
As calm or as lively as you like
Asks for nothing
No permissions, and nothing leaves your Mac unless you ask it to: Send on a report, Check for Updates, the usage line, or joining a fleet — the one part that wants an account. Reacting to music and keeping the menu bar’s text crisp are optional, and each says what it needs before you switch it on. More.
Every look has its knobs
How many stars, how often one shoots across, how bright, how much it glows — like the settings screensavers used to have.
Make your own
Start from any look, change its colors and motion, and share it as a small file. Try it in your browser.
Let it react
To the music you’re playing, or to your agents. Or leave it to drift on its own.
Messages in light
Have it write a note into the bar, or drop one below it in a swell of aurora that sinks back in.
When you step away
Leave the Mac alone for a while and the screen can fill with a night sky: curtains of light over mountains and a still lake. They turn amber when an agent needs you and red when one fails, so you can read it from the other side of the room. Off until you turn it on.
How much plan is left
The panel can show what your Claude plan has left, and Codex beside it, as rings, bars or plain numbers. It reads them from your own Claude Code and they stay on your Mac.
Where it goes
Behind the menu bar, over it, behind your windows, or across the whole screen. It can trail off in wisps, or hang light down the screen.
Gentle on your Mac
It pauses when your screen sleeps or locks, when a full-screen app is up, and on battery if you like. It can also empty the bar whenever nothing is happening, and draw nothing at all until something is.
Everything it can do is in the docs.
Get Aurora Glass
Download for MacAurora Glass is for the Mac
Open this page on one to download it.
Free · v0.1.171 · 4 MB · macOS 26 Tahoe or later on Apple silicon · Notarized by Apple, so it opens without a warning.
Or with Homebrew, which also puts the
aurora command on your PATH:
brew install --cask gourneau/tap/aurora-glass