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B

Baton

A macOS menu bar app that tracks every Claude Code and Codex session on your machine and tells you which AI coding agent is waiting on you right now.

Starting at$0 (self-hosted)
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💡

In Plain English

A macOS menu bar app that tracks every Claude Code and Codex session on your machine and tells you which AI coding agent is waiting on you right now.

OverviewFeaturesPricingUse CasesFAQ

Overview

Baton is a free, open-source macOS menu bar app that solves a problem anyone running multiple AI coding agents knows well: once agents do real work unattended, the hard part is no longer doing the work, it is knowing which of your running sessions is waiting on a decision from you. Baton reads the signals your machine already emits, with zero manual entry, and surfaces the one that matters: the session that finished its leg and handed the baton back to you. It watches Claude Code session files in ~/.claude and Codex thread state in ~/.codex using FSEvents, so the menu bar count of sessions waiting on you updates in under a second while staying battery-cheap. The dropdown groups everything by tool (Claude Code and Codex), then by Working and Done. Clicking a Claude session raises its Terminal.app tab; clicking a Codex thread opens it via the codex:// deep link. Waiting detection is tool-aware: for Claude Code, an idle session whose last turn is an assistant answer counts as waiting; for Codex, Baton mirrors the app's own unread blue-dot state. Jumping to a session acknowledges it and clears the count. There is also a dependency-free HTML dashboard served on localhost for a full multi-tab view. Baton is entirely local and strictly read-only over your session directories; nothing leaves your machine. Install is a one-line curl script that sets up an isolated Python venv and a login LaunchAgent. Requires macOS and Python 3.9+, MIT licensed. Baton does not use MCP; it works by passively reading local session state.

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Key Features

Feature information is available on the official website.

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Pricing Plans

Open Source

$0 (self-hosted)

  • ✓MIT license
  • ✓macOS menu bar app with live waiting-on-you count
  • ✓Claude Code and Codex session tracking
  • ✓Click-to-jump to Terminal tabs and Codex threads
  • ✓Local HTML dashboard (127.0.0.1 only)
  • ✓Optional hand-off notifications
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Best Use Cases

🎯

Developers running several Claude Code and Codex sessions in parallel who need to know which one needs input

⚡

Staying responsive to agent hand-offs without watching terminal windows

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Monitoring unattended agent runs and scheduled Codex automations from the menu bar

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Jumping straight to the right terminal tab or Codex thread instead of hunting through windows

Pros & Cons

✓ Pros

  • ✓Free, open source (MIT), no telemetry, nothing leaves the machine
  • ✓Sub-second updates via FSEvents; negligible CPU/battery cost
  • ✓Handles both Claude Code and Codex in one unified view
  • ✓Click-to-jump saves the biggest actual cost of multi-agent work: finding the right window
  • ✓One-line install with an isolated venv — clean uninstall too

✗ Cons

  • ✗macOS only; no Linux or Windows menu bar equivalent
  • ✗Requires Python 3.9+ on the host (3.11+ for Codex automation tracking)
  • ✗Only tracks Claude Code and Codex — other coding agents (Cursor, Cline, Aider) not supported
  • ✗No push notifications to phone / other devices; menu bar only
  • ✗Read-only by design — cannot send input back to sessions

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does Baton cost?+

Baton pricing starts at $0 (self-hosted). They offer a single pricing plan.
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Quick Info

Category

developer-tools

Website

github.com/neilkpatel/baton
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