Coucou: a free Mac notch app that watches Claude Code for you

When Claude Code runs a long task, I keep flipping back to the terminal to check on it. Coucou fixes that. It's a free, open-source Mac app that puts a little pet in your notch. It shows what your coding agent is doing, and it lets you answer permission requests without leaving what you're working on. Here's what it does, how to set it up, and what to check before you trust it.

01What Coucou is

Coucou is made by Louis Raillé and lives on GitHub. The code is MIT-licensed, so it's free to use. It hooks into your coding agents and shows their activity in a small island under the notch.

The README lists Claude Code, Cursor, Codex and Gemini CLI, plus others like Copilot CLI, OpenCode and Amp. You can follow several of them side by side.

02What it can do

Show what your agent is doing, live, right under the notch.
Show Claude Code permission requests with Allow, Deny and Always buttons.
Show the choices when Claude asks you a question, so you can pick one from the notch.
Give you a "Reply in terminal" fallback when you'd rather answer there.

03What you need

A Mac on macOS 15 or newer.
Claude Code (or another supported agent) already installed.
A couple of minutes.

04Set it up, step by step

Download the latest Coucou.zip from the Releases page (link below).
Unzip it and move Coucou.app into your Applications folder.
Launch it. When macOS asks you to confirm, click Open.
Open Coucou's Settings, go to the Claude Code section and click Install hooks.
Coucou backs up your ~/.claude/settings.json, then shows you the change before it writes anything. Read it and approve.

Releases page

https://github.com/Louis-CFM/coucou/releases

Codex has its own Install hooks button in the same Settings window, and the README covers Gemini CLI and the other agents too.

05Test it before a long job

Once the hooks are in, start Claude Code in any project and give it something small. Watch the notch while it works.

Small test task

Read the README in this folder and give me a three-line summary. Then create a file called notch-test.txt with the word hello in it.

06Not on a Mac?

The README also has builds for Windows 10/11 and Linux. There's no notch there, so the island slides out of the top edge of the screen instead. The Windows installer isn't code-signed yet, so SmartScreen will warn you on first run.

07Good to know

It's free and open source under MIT. The name, the character and its art aren't MIT, though.
Installing hooks edits your Claude settings. Coucou backs them up first, but it's still worth reading the diff.
The README says that if Coucou isn't running, the hook exits straight away, so Claude Code isn't blocked.
Permission requests wait for your click, so keep an eye on the notch during a run.

Sources

Coucou on GitHub (README)