Codeman 1.50.0: Codeman for Mac, and your MacBook's Apple logo glows with your agents

[Ark0N]

Codeman 1.50.0 is out, and this one is big: Codeman is a Mac app now! Download it, double-click, done. And on a MacBook Pro with the PROLED XDR display, the Apple logo on the lid now blinks with what your agents are doing. I've wanted that one for a long time :)

Download: Codeman.dmg (the link always gives you the newest app)

Codeman for Mac. A real native app, under 5 MB, built on macOS's own WebKit instead of a bundled browser. One universal download for Apple silicon and Intel, macOS 11.3 or later. It's signed with my Developer ID and notarized by Apple, so it opens after macOS asks once about an app from the internet.

• No Codeman on this Mac yet? The app installs it for you. No Terminal, no admin password, just a checklist in the window. No coding agent yet either? It offers one, and you can add more later from the app menu. (The install from the app needs macOS 15, or a tmux that's already there. On an older Mac it opens Terminal instead.)
• Codeman already running? It finds it and opens it, or starts it if it's stopped.
• Codeman on another machine? Your Mac mini, a home server, anything on your tailnet: connect by address, and the password stays in the Keychain.
• Codeman keeps running in the background when you quit the app, so your agents keep working. Full screen, native dialogs, a real Edit menu, and sessions or files popped out into their own windows.

Your MacBook's Apple logo glows with your agents. This is the fun one! The new MacBook Pros with the PROLED XDR display light up the Apple logo on the lid, and Codeman can now blink it by what your agents are doing:

• Working: Heartbeat, a double beat.
• Done and waiting for you: Wink, one slow blink every few seconds.
• Needs your permission: Alarm, three sharp flashes and a rest. Hey, I need something!

Pick your own rhythm for each state under View > Blink Apple Logo (Calm, Slow, Wink, Heartbeat, Fast or Alarm). Walk away, grab a coffee, look at the lid from across the room and you know whether your agents need you. I measured the rhythms on the real logo of an M5 Pro MacBook Pro, through real agent turns. It's off until you pick a style, it never flashes more than three times a second, and the menu only shows on a Mac with that logo. It uses a private macOS setting, so a future macOS update could take it away. You can see the three rhythms live at getcodeman.com/#mac.

A coding model that runs on your Mac (experimental). The welcome screen has a new Run a local model button. On an Apple silicon Mac it looks at your chip and memory, picks a local coding model and an agent that fit, installs both and starts a session on it. No account, no API key, and your prompts go to the model on your Mac, not to a cloud provider. I rebuilt the model list for every Mac from 8 GB to 512 GB, each model with its own memory math: a 9B coding model from 18 GB, Qwen3.8 27B or Qwen3.6 35B-A3B from 36 GB, Ornith 1.5 122B from 128 GB. On 8 and 16 GB it tells you straight why nothing fits instead of handing you something that crawls. On my 48 GB M5 Pro MacBook it picked Qwen3.6 35B-A3B with OpenCode: a 23 GB download, installed, checked and running in a bit over 6 minutes. A weekly check now watches every model in the list, so it keeps up with new releases. Guide: Local models.

Cloud plus local: Claude hands work to your Mac (experimental). This is the combo I'm most excited about! Your Claude Code session can now give tasks to that local model through the Codeman skill: local_model checks what's installed, spawn_worker <name> local starts a worker on it, and sendmark hands it a task and reads the answer back. So Claude plans and reviews in the cloud, and your Mac does the bulk: summaries, first drafts, boilerplate, files that should stay on the machine. Just tell Claude "use the local model for this".

The Codeman skill is on by default. New sessions get the skill right away, so any agent can start and drive other sessions (and the local model) without an install step. The skill folder ignores itself in git, so it never shows up in your repo. Heads-up: if you saved App Settings on an older version, 1.50.0 switches it on once at the first start. Don't want it? App Settings, Agents & CLIs, Codeman Agent Skill, and it stays off.

The Files panel follows worktrees outside the session folder. @irisitymichaelgrundberg built this one. Since 1.49.0 the panel follows your agent into a worktree inside the session's folder, and now also into one beside it (git worktree add ../feature) when the session's own repository vouches for it, with tight rules on which folders it will follow.

Smaller things.

• No more "install the command line developer tools" popup on a Mac without Xcode. The server used to run Apple's placeholder git on the first page load.
• A new agent shows up in Run as soon as the installer adds it, instead of up to 5 minutes later.
• The approvals list leaves a brand-new permission dialog alone for its first 3 seconds. Before, it could clear the red tab on every device and leave the push notification's Approve button with nothing to answer.
• Custom model endpoints survive two writes at once, and a damaged file is refused instead of overwritten.
• @Randalix made two tests independent of the host's locale and git ignore file.
• The Start Ralph Loop button is gone from the start screen. Ralph itself stays: Session Options, Ralph / Todo.

Release notes: https://github.com/Ark0N/Codeman/releases/tag/codeman%401.50.0

To update Codeman itself: Settings, System, Updates in the app, or re-run the install line. The Mac app opens the Codeman you already have, so there's nothing to migrate.

Thanks: @irisitymichaelgrundberg and @Randalix.