Hear your AI think. A macOS menubar app that plays radio-signal audio feedback based on real-time Claude Code activity.
RadioWave turns Claude Code into a radio station. When Claude is thinking, you hear a contemplative drone. When it's running tools, you hear data-modem pulses. When it's generating a response, rich FM synthesis fills the air. When it's idle, warm atmospheric static crackles in the background — like a shortwave radio between stations.
RadioWave installs Claude Code hooks that send real-time HTTP events to a local server running inside the app. Every prompt, tool call, and response triggers a state change with its own audio signature.
| Claude Code State | RadioWave Audio |
|---|---|
| No session | Warm atmospheric static with stereo crackle, distant sweep ghosts, faint morse fragments |
| Session active, waiting | Clean presence hiss with detuned stereo pilot tone |
| Processing prompt | Contemplative drone — chord, oceanic pad, or number station (randomized) |
| Running a tool | Mechanical clockwork, dialup modem, or teletype pulses (randomized) |
| Generating response | Rich FM synthesis, music-box arpeggio, or deep pulsar rhythm (randomized) |
| Error / signal lost | Descending siren or digital glitch with static burst |
Every transition plays a tuning-dial sweep — static fragments resolving into the new signal, like turning a physical radio knob.
- Procedural audio — all sounds generated in real-time via AVAudioEngine, no samples
- Randomized variants — each state has 2-3 sound presets that rotate so it never gets stale
- Stereo spatial audio — crackles pan between ears, drones shimmer across channels
- Tuning transitions — state changes sound like turning a radio dial
- Animated waveform — 60fps Canvas visualization driven by state
- Signal meters — real-time signal strength, noise level, and CPU load bars
- Demo mode — click state buttons to preview sounds without live monitoring
- Full settings — volume, static intensity, idle static toggle, launch at login
- Claude Code hooks — auto-installed on first launch, zero config needed
- Fallback detection — session JSONL file watching if hooks aren't available
- Menubar only — no Dock icon, no main window, lives in your menubar
- macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later
- Claude Code installed
- Xcode 15+ (to build from source)
- XcodeGen (
brew install xcodegen)
git clone https://github.com/hirakcoder/RadioWave.git
cd RadioWave
xcodegen generate
open RadioWave.xcodeprojBuild and run (Cmd+R) in Xcode. The app appears in your menubar as a signal-bars icon.
On first launch, RadioWave automatically installs hooks into ~/.claude/settings.json. Start a Claude Code session and you'll hear it come alive.
RadioWave/
├── RadioWaveApp.swift # App entry point
├── AppDelegate.swift # Menubar, popover, subsystem coordination
├── Views/
│ ├── PopoverView.swift # Main panel with waveform, meters, controls
│ ├── WaveformView.swift # 60fps animated sine wave (Canvas + TimelineView)
│ ├── MetersView.swift # Signal/Noise/Load progress bars
│ └── SettingsView.swift # Preferences window (Audio, Connection, General, About)
├── Audio/
│ ├── AudioEngine.swift # AVAudioEngine pipeline with state crossfading
│ ├── NoiseGenerator.swift # Atmospheric static, crackle, sweeps, morse fragments
│ └── SignalSynthesizer.swift # Drones, FM synthesis, arpeggios, modem pulses
├── Core/
│ ├── AppState.swift # Single source of truth (ObservableObject)
│ ├── RadioState.swift # State enum with audio/visual properties
│ ├── DesignSystem.swift # Colors and typography
│ ├── HookServer.swift # Local HTTP server for Claude Code hooks
│ ├── HookInstaller.swift # Reads/writes ~/.claude/settings.json
│ └── SessionWatcher.swift # Fallback: watches session JSONL files
└── Resources/
└── Assets.xcassets
Tier 1 — Claude Code Hooks (primary): RadioWave runs a local HTTP server on port 19847. Claude Code sends POST requests for every event (SessionStart, UserPromptSubmit, PreToolUse, PostToolUse, Stop, etc.) with full context. This is real-time and officially supported.
Tier 2 — Session JSONL (fallback):
Watches ~/.claude/sessions/ for active PIDs and monitors the session transcript file for new entries using DispatchSource file system events.
Open RadioWave Settings > Connection > "Remove Hooks", or manually edit ~/.claude/settings.json and remove the entries pointing to localhost:19847.
If you find RadioWave useful, consider supporting the project:
MIT — see LICENSE for details.
Built by Hirak Banerjee