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Liang

Make your AI IDE's working state visible on your macOS screen.

Liang is a macOS menu bar app. Through a soft glow around the notch, a mouse-following glow orb, and a menu bar icon, it shows your AI IDE (Coding Agent)'s working state in real time — idle, processing, waiting for confirmation, success, or error. Without switching windows, you can tell at a glance whether the Agent is thinking, waiting for you, or done.

Features

• Notch glow: automatically detects the notch and renders a non-intrusive state glow around it; falls back to a top-center glow on non-notch devices.
• Cursor glow: a mouse-following glow that changes color with state.
• Menu bar status color: the menu bar icon orb breathes/pulses with state, adapting to light/dark mode.
• Multiple states: idle / processing / waiting / success / error / unknown / disconnected, with customizable colors and animations.
• Low disturbance: respects macOS "Reduce Motion" and "Low Power Mode", automatically degrading to a static glow to save power and comply with system accessibility guidelines.

Notch glow

Cursor glow

Menu bar glow

Installation

1. Download the latest Liang-x.y.z.dmg from Releases.
2. Open the DMG and drag Liang.app into Applications.

Requirements: macOS 14.0+, Apple Silicon (arm64).

Usage

1. After launching Liang, a status orb icon appears in the menu bar.
2. On first launch, the onboarding flow guides you to configure Hooks bridging for Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, and CodeBuddy; you can also manage each IDE's connection in Settings at any time.
3. Once configured, when the Agent in the corresponding IDE starts working, waits for your confirmation, or finishes a task, the notch glow and menu bar icon change color accordingly.
4. Click the menu bar icon to view the current state, source, and most recent event; in Settings you can customize each state's color, glow toggle, brightness, blur, and animation speed.

Privacy

Liang follows a "local-first, minimal collection" principle — it does not read or upload your code, prompts, or file contents.

• State metadata only: the bridge scripts extract only the minimal metadata fields needed for state (source, event type, timestamp, session/task ID, tool name, state, etc.) — never the prompt text, code content, or file contents.
• Local-only data: events are written to the local ~/.liang/ directory, event files are capped at 10 MB (truncated beyond that), and logs only record exceptions, not event payloads.
• No telemetry, no cloud sync: Liang collects no usage data, requires no account, and uploads nothing to any server.
• Only network request: the auto-update check (Sparkle) accesses the public update feed appcast.xml to detect new versions, carrying no user data.
• Local config persistence: all settings are stored in local UserDefaults, falling back to safe defaults if corrupted.

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Supported Coding Agents & Limitations

Liang senses state through each IDE's official Hooks mechanism, without injecting into or modifying your code. It currently supports 4 coding agents:

Agent	Hooks location	Waiting (waiting)	Success/failure distinction
Cursor	~/.cursor/hooks.json	✅	✅
Claude Code	~/.claude/settings.json	✅	✅
Codex	~/.codex/hooks.json	✅	❌ always success
CodeBuddy	~/.codebuddy/settings.json	⚠️ CLI only	❌ always success

Known limitations

Client availability

• Codex: the hook only runs after you trust it via /hooks in the CLI; the desktop app cannot trust it.
• CodeBuddy: the desktop app supports only 7 hook events; waiting (permission confirmation / deep thinking) is only observable in the CLI version.

Success / failure distinction

• Codex, CodeBuddy: the task-end event (Stop) carries no success/failure field, so it is always shown as "success".

Event timing

• Codex: the SessionEnd event fires only after ~30 minutes of session idleness.

Version requirements

• Claude Code: requires Claude Code ≥ v2.1.196 for the prompt_id field.

⚠️ Claude Code and Codex have not yet been verified by the author; actual behavior may differ from expectations — feedback is welcome.

All the above limitations stem from each IDE's own Hooks spec, not from Liang.

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If you have questions or suggestions, open an issue or contact the author.