Perch v0.0.3

Perch now watches both of Xcode's built-in agents — Claude and Codex.

Install

Download Perch.dmg below, open it, and drag Perch into Applications. Signed and notarised by Apple: a double click is all it takes.

What's new

• Codex support. Whichever agent wrote most recently is the one on screen. No setting to choose, nothing to configure.
• A Codex session shows one row fewer than a Claude one: Codex records no conversation title.
• The diagnostic (swift run perch-cli) now reports which agents are installed, which are running, and which session is being read.

Requirements

• macOS 14 or later
• A Mac with a notch — on a notchless display Perch stays silent
• One of Xcode's built-in agents, which must have run at least once

Unchanged

Read-only throughout: transcripts are opened read-only and watched with an O_EVTONLY descriptor, only metadata is decoded, nothing is persisted, logged or sent anywhere. 99 tests, strict concurrency.

Perch v0.0.2

Perch shows the state of Xcode's built-in Claude agent in the notch of a MacBook Pro.

This release installs by double click. Perch is now signed with a Developer ID and notarised by Apple — no security warning, no right-click trick, no trip through System Settings.

Install

Download Perch-0.0.2.dmg below, open it, and drag Perch into Applications.

Drag it to Applications rather than running it from Downloads: the permission you grant it is tied to where the app lives, and moving it later means granting it again.

Requirements

• macOS 14 or later
• A Mac with a notch — on a notchless display Perch stays silent
• Xcode's built-in Claude agent, which must have run at least once

What's new since v0.0.1

• Signed, notarised and stapled, distributed as a DMG
• The bundle version now comes from the release tag, so the two cannot drift
• Scripts/package.sh performs the whole release run and documents each step

What it does

Idle, there is nothing — the notch goes back to being a notch. The moment the agent works, two hairlines frame it, and hovering unfolds a panel: project, branch, model, context in use, session token totals, conversation title, Xcode run destination, and the last tools called.

Read-only throughout: transcripts are opened read-only and watched with an O_EVTONLY descriptor, only metadata is decoded, nothing is persisted, logged or sent anywhere. The interface speaks 11 languages; perch-cli stays English so its output can be pasted into a public issue.

Translations for languages the author does not read went out without a native reviewer. Corrections are very welcome.

Perch v0.0.1

Perch shows the state of Xcode's built-in Claude agent in the notch of a MacBook Pro.

Idle, there is nothing — the notch goes back to being a notch. The moment the agent works, two hairlines frame it, and hovering unfolds a panel: project, branch, model, context in use, session token totals, conversation title, Xcode run destination, and the last tools called.

Requirements

• macOS 14 or later
• A Mac with a notch (on a notchless display Perch stays silent)
• Xcode's built-in Claude agent, which must have run at least once
• A Swift 6 toolchain

Install

No binary is attached, on purpose: the build signs ad hoc, so a downloaded .app would be refused by Gatekeeper. Build it yourself instead — there are no external dependencies.

git clone https://github.com/CarolaneLFBV/Perch.git
cd Perch
bash Scripts/bundle.sh && open build/Perch.app

The bundle is not optional: it carries the NSAppleEventsUsageDescription key, without which macOS kills the process on the first Apple Event sent to Xcode.

In this release

• Read-only throughout: transcripts are opened read-only and watched with an O_EVTONLY descriptor, only metadata is decoded, nothing is persisted, logged or sent anywhere
• An About window with the version, a language selector and a Quit button
• Interface localised in 11 languages — English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, Dutch, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Korean, Russian
• perch-cli, a one-pass diagnostic whose output is safe to paste into a public issue
• 84 tests, strict concurrency, CI that also assembles the bundle

Translations for languages the author does not read went out without a native reviewer. Corrections are very welcome: one file per language under Sources/Perch/Resources/<code>.lproj/.