Working alongside you at the same desk
The nicest moment in the whole feature is the quietest one: you are typing, and a few feet away on your Dock someone is typing too. While there is keyboard or mouse activity, desk work joins your buddy’s usual mix, so you often have company doing the same kind of thing you are.
What counts as working?
Any keyboard or mouse input in the last 20 seconds. The app asks macOS how long it has been since the last input and nothing more: not which keys, not which app, not what you wrote.
What do they do?
Typing, writing in a notebook and thinking are mixed into the usual pool, so they are the likeliest things you will see, but the ordinary day carries on around them: a walk, a stretch, stacking books, watering the plant, a light-bulb idea. It is a nudge towards desk work, not a switch that turns them into an office drone.
It never interrupts you
Nothing starts within 8 seconds of you clicking a buddy, while you are dragging one, or during a run you asked for. An activity also stands for at least 20 seconds before anything can replace it, so a signal that flickers can never make them twitch.
Where it sits in the order
Below everything else. A working AI agent, the charger, a long break and a locked screen all win first, so the typing behaviour fills in the ordinary stretches rather than competing with the moments that matter.
Turning it on
Settings, Buddies, “What your Mac is doing”.