Barn.app: A Stream Deck-Style Monitoring Tool for macOS Agents
Monitor background processes and agent states directly from your macOS menu bar.
1Real-time Agent Visibility
Barn.app functions as a menu bar monitor for background agents, representing each process as a distinct dot. When an agent requires user input, the indicator changes to coral. This design allows developers to track multiple concurrent tasks without manually checking terminal windows, effectively turning the menu bar into a status dashboard.
2Context-Aware Window Management
The tool integrates with terminal emulators like Ghostty, iTerm2, and Terminal.app, alongside editors such as VS Code and Zed. When an agent triggers a notification, Barn.app automatically identifies the correct tab, split, or pane and brings it to the foreground. This eliminates manual window hunting during complex development workflows.
3Spotlight-Style Agent Switching
Users can navigate between active agents using a dedicated switcher interface. The tool supports keyboard filtering and hotkeys, allowing users to jump to specific agents using ⌘1–9 shortcuts. Urgent tasks are automatically sorted to the top of the list, ensuring that critical permission prompts or pending questions receive immediate developer attention.
4Floating Status Dashboard
For persistent monitoring, the application provides a floating deck feature accessible via the ⌃⌥D shortcut. This strip of glass tiles remains visible across all desktops, providing a glanceable status board. It allows developers to maintain situational awareness of background processes while working in full-screen applications or across multiple virtual workspaces.
5Flexible Hook Integration
Barn.app detects agents automatically via the process table, but users can enhance precision using hooks. By pointing a hook at the Barn binary or writing a small JSON file to the status directory, any script can report its specific state. This mechanism provides granular control over how custom agents communicate their status.
6Privacy-First Local Architecture
The application operates entirely locally on macOS without requiring accounts, telemetry, or external analytics. It reads the process table and local session files directly from the user's machine. The only external network activity is a daily update check, which users can disable in the settings to maintain a completely air-gapped monitoring environment.
7Apple Events and Permissions
To manage window focus, Barn.app utilizes Apple Events, the same framework employed by productivity tools like Raycast or Alfred. macOS requires a one-time permission grant per terminal application to enable this functionality. The tool strictly limits its usage of these permissions to focusing windows and tabs, ensuring minimal system intrusion.
8Resource Efficiency and Access
As an open-source project, Barn.app is free to use and designed for low overhead, consuming CPU resources comparable to a standard clock widget. By integrating seamlessly with existing terminal and editor workflows, it provides a lightweight solution for managing agent-based development tasks without requiring changes to existing build or execution pipelines.