I run several Claude Code sessions side by side in iTerm2 tabs. And I kept missing the moment a session needed me — a permission prompt sitting there for ten minutes, or a finished task I only noticed when I happened to switch back to the tab.
So I built shiibar-cc, a macOS menu bar app that watches your Claude Code sessions and tells you when it's your turn.
To be clear about the niche: this is for people who run Claude Code in plain iTerm2 windows and tabs — no tmux, no other terminals, no other agents. If that's you, read on.
What it does
The menu bar icon is a little window with one glyph in it: a blinking ✻ while some session is working, a bold ! when a session is waiting for you, and a red badge when something needs your eyes and you haven't looked yet.
Click it and you get the list — what each session is doing, grouped by state. Click a row and it jumps to that exact iTerm2 tab (split panes included). When a session finishes or asks for permission, you also get a normal macOS notification with Claude's last message; clicking that jumps to the tab too.
That's the whole app. The glyphs are the same ones Claude Code's own TUI uses, so the menu bar reads like a miniature of what you're already watching.
How it works, briefly
Claude Code's hooks report session events to a tiny local daemon; the menu bar app subscribes to it. Everything stays on your machine — nothing is sent anywhere.
Install
brew install --cask bufferings/tap/shiibar-cc
This installs the app (signed and notarized), puts the shiibar-cc CLI on your PATH, and installs the Claude Code hooks plugin for you (this repo doubles as a plugin marketplace; the cask tells you exactly what it did). Launch the app once, grant the notification and iTerm2 automation permissions, and check that everything is green in the app's Setup Check window.
Requirements: macOS 13+, Apple Silicon, iTerm2, Claude Code.
Uninstall is brew uninstall --cask shiibar-cc (plus claude plugin uninstall shiibar-cc for the hooks).
The fine print
- iTerm2 native windows only. tmux (even
-CC) is deliberately unsupported. - Claude Code only — no other agents.
- The full behavior spec, and the reasoning behind every "no", live in the repo's design doc.
If you live in the same niche, give it a try: github.com/bufferings/shiibar-cc
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