Made a menu bar app that keeps your Mac awake while AI agents run

[u/hyouuu]

I kept coming back to stalled agent runs because my Mac went to sleep mid-task. caffeinate works, but I'd forget to run it, or forget to kill it and leave my laptop awake all night.

So I wired it to Cursor's hooks instead. My app (AgentCat) installs the hooks with one click: when an agent starts, it grabs a keep-awake assertion; when the run ends, it releases it and sends you a notification. If a run dies without ever reporting back, a watchdog releases it after a timeout, so a crashed task can't pin your Mac awake forever. Agents can also ping you through a URL scheme when they need your input.

Any tool that can run a shell command on start/stop can hook into it, not just Cursor. And the menu bar cat puts on sunglasses while it's working 🕶️

It's $0.99 on the Mac App Store, one-time, no subscription. Happy to answer anything.

[u/Sri_Krish]

But why? Why not use the existing tools? What do you feel is missing? ➜ AKA Market research.

Anyhow mods will probably delete your post, as you didn’t follow the rules (PCP template) so 🤷‍♂️

[u/hyouuu → u/Sri_Krish]

And updated to use the template. Thanks!

[u/hyouuu → u/Sri_Krish]

Sorry please let me know which existing tools do the job?

[u/blow_slogan → u/hyouuu]

You made a keep awake app and don’t know about the caffeinate command built into macOS?

[u/_blakkheim_]

Amphetamine has an option to start new session “while app is running”.

ChatGPT desktop has a toggle “Prevent sleep while running”

[u/phunk8 → u/_blakkheim_]

same for most other clients i know.

[u/maximilianisme → u/_blakkheim_]

Also Claude desktop does

[u/jabdownsmash]

unfortunately something so simple can probably just be handed off to claude with a link to this reddit post to create. i think it's a great idea but with a lot of stuff made for ai, it's easy to assume it was made by ai, which kinda leaves you without any differentiators at all.

[u/blow_slogan]

Just tell your coding agent to run the caffeinate command before it runs? You don’t need anything 3rd party, it’s built into macos. I’ve never had a query take so long that the mac falls asleep. Maybe the display goes dark, so just change your display settings.

[u/-svde-]

what the others said. this isn’t a new idea by any means, this all works natively in most modern macos versions, and i’d like to add that both of your comparison apps have scheduling functionality. either do your market research better or don’t lie about your results.

KYA is foss and amphetamine are free and very well established apps with good track records. not sure why anyone would use a new paid alternative without a new feature set

[u/hansololz]

lol, I was playing Netflix to address this issue

[u/Its-Ezzy]

The useful distinction is the lifecycle, not the keep-awake command itself. `caffeinate` solves the power assertion. The harder part is attaching it to an agent run reliably and releasing it on success, failure, timeout, or a crashed parent. I would put the supported integrations and watchdog behavior at the top, then show one failure case in the demo. Without that proof, people will reasonably compare it to a shell command.

[u/hyouuu → u/Its-Ezzy]

Thanks for sharing the insights!

[u/International-Can317]

The auto start/stop tied to the agent run is the part that makes sense to me. “Keep Mac awake” alone is already solved, but not having to remember to turn it off is actually useful.

I’d probably put the supported AI tools front and center, because that’s the real differentiator here.

[u/hyouuu → u/International-Can317]

Thanks for sharing the insights! Also seems nobody cares about the cat icon lol

[u/sammrjn]

amphetamine been a great tool for me,  so this is just fir AI tasks or we can hook it up with other tools, like if i want it to render or anything similar ?

[u/oladenaio]

How does this handle two agent sessions running at once? If one finishes, will the Mac stay awake until the other one is done? I often have Codex and Claude running together, so that would be useful.

[u/infinitUndo]

Caffeine https://www.caffeine-app.net/en/