When Claude is thinking, so is your buddy
A buddy used to live in its own world: wander the Dock, play an activity, nap. Now it can follow along with your day. When Claude Code is working, Max types, debugs or thinks. When it stops and waits for you to approve something, he waves, jumps or peeks at you. Plug in the charger and someone celebrates. Step away for a couple of minutes and they stretch, make coffee or look out of the window. It is off until you turn it on.
| What is happening | What they do |
|---|---|
| Claude or Codex is waiting for you | Wave, desk wave, high five, jump, notification, peek, nod, sticky note |
| Claude or Codex is working | Type, debug, write, think, to-do, sticky note, video call, drawing, repair, error reaction, priority sort, and the Work story |
| Screen locked or asleep | Sleep, relax, sit, desk edge, floor nap |
| You have been away two minutes | Stretch, peek, coffee, read, desk edge, relax, drink, snack, water the plant, clean the desk, drawing, sore foot, and the Break and Garden stories |
| The charger just went in | Plug the cable in, celebrate, dance, high five, jump, organize cables, and the Fix-it story |
| An agent is open but quiet | Idle, coffee, read, peek, stack books, organize books, desk edge, snack, and the Break and Play stories |
| You are at the keyboard | Type, write and think join their usual activities, so someone is often working alongside you |
| Nothing in particular | Their usual activities and stories, the way they always were |
What does it watch?
Five things, all read from your own Mac: whether the charger is plugged in and the battery level; how long since you last touched the mouse or keyboard; whether the screen is locked or asleep; the time of day; and, with AI mode on, whether Claude Code or Codex is working, waiting for you, or idle. At night the quiet states prefer sleep, relax and the Night story.
What it never does
It never sends anything anywhere: no upload, no account needed, nothing tracked. It never reads what you or the agent wrote — for AI mode it looks at when session files last changed, and at the last few kilobytes to tell “working” from “waiting for you”. Nothing from those files is stored or logged. It never asks for a permission prompt, and it never writes to the agent’s files or settings.
How does it pace itself?
An activity changes at most every 20 seconds, so nobody twitches, and the same one will not come back for 90 seconds. Choices are weighted and random, and never repeat twice in a row. It stays out of your way: nothing starts within 8 seconds of you clicking a buddy, while you drag one, or during a run you started. Two buddies on the Dock get different picks for the same situation.
Turning it on
Open Settings, Buddies, and switch on “What your Mac is doing”. AI mode, the part that follows Claude Code and Codex, is a separate switch beside it, so you can have the charger and quiet-minute reactions without it.
Tuning it yourself
Every mapping and timing lives in one file inside the app. Copy it to ~/Library/Application Support/app.mydockbuddies.mac/awareness.json, change what you like — which activities belong to a situation, their weights, the 20-second and 90-second numbers — and restart the app. The app only ever reads that file, and never writes to it.
Which version has it?
This is in version 0.1.3, out now. Updates download in the background and install when you quit the app, so there was nothing to buy and nothing to reinstall. The app runs on macOS 14 Sonoma or later, on an Apple silicon or Intel Mac.