Menu bar status item for busy AI agents#670
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A new "Show menu bar item" preference (Settings > Advanced, ShowMenuBarItem) installs an NSStatusItem independent of the existing "Exclude from Dock" gating. The icon shows the template StatusItem image plus an orange badge with the count of currently-working agents (pulled from TypingStatusModel), and the badge disappears when no agents are working. Clicking opens the existing status bar menu. Adds TypingStatusModel.chatIDs(forParticipant:) so the controller can recompute the busy set after each typingStatus broker update without extending the Update enum. The legacy inline NSStatusItem creation in iTermApplication setIsUIElement: is replaced by a refresh call into the new controller, which still honors the existing UIElement + statusBarIcon advanced setting combination for backward compatibility.
ChatBroker delivers updates synchronously on the publisher's thread, so the controller's typing-status handler was mutating state and touching AppKit off-main. Hop to the main queue before reading busyChatIDs or updating the status item. The previous icon implementation drew the template glyph into a bitmap and assigned the composite with isTemplate=false, which broke automatic tinting in dark menu bars. Replace it with a layered approach: the status item button keeps the unmodified template image, and a custom BadgeView subview draws the orange count badge in the top-right corner only when busy count > 0. Promote the menu bar item toggle from a plain iTermPreferences key to a real DEFINE_BOOL in iTermAdvancedSettingsModel so it appears in the Settings > Advanced search UI.
Replace the badge-overlay approach with an icon rendered from the original StatusItem.png mask: tint the mask orange and replace the dollar glyph with the busy count (1-9, or + at 10 or more). When idle, the unmodified template image renders as before. Count is the union of OSC 21337 tab indicators and ChatBroker agent typing chats, deduped by namespaced id so a Claude Code session in a terminal pane and a built-in AI chat both contribute one each.
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Interesting idea but I think the scope is too narrow. I can see the value of a global status indicator but it needs to be useful more broadly to justify the added complexity. When clicked it should show something useful, like a list of sessions sorted by status, maybe integrate with triggers, which sessions have had bells. I'll keep mulling this over. |
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sure @gnachman, I wanted to keep this one atomic but yeah this could be expanded on click to show the status of each of the tabs/agents right there and clicking to take you directly to the upfront app, at the given tab/agent you select, I could implement it in this very PR if you want 👍🏽 |
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Import upstream gnachman#670 ("Menu bar status item for busy AI agents") behind the new spawnterm.agent_menubar capability flag (default OFF). When the flag is OFF, behavior is identical to stock iTerm2: the controller only shows a status item for the legacy "excluded from Dock + status bar icon" combination and never draws a busy-count badge. When the flag is ON, the independent menu bar item (gated additionally by the ShowMenuBarItem Advanced setting) and the orange busy-agent count badge become available. The flag is the master switch, wired in the three synced places (spawnterm-flag, spawnterm_flag.py, iTermSpawnTermCapabilities) plus the docs, and gated inside AIMenuBarStatusController.refreshOnMain. Adapted from upstream gnachman#670. Co-authored-by: carvalhoviniciusluiz <carvalhoviniciusluiz@users.noreply.github.com> Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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…an#670/gnachman#673) + 3 new AI flags + agent guide Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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Opt-in menu bar status item showing how many AI agents are currently working. Off by default, gated on the new ShowMenuBarItem advanced setting. The existing UIElement plus statusBarIcon combination still installs the same item for dock-less mode.
The icon recolors the existing StatusItem template asset orange and replaces the dollar glyph with the count (1 to 9, or + at 10 or more). Idle keeps isTemplate true so light/dark menu bars auto-tint.
Count is the union of two sources, deduped by namespaced id: terminal sessions whose OSC 21337 status text starts with "Working" (case-insensitive — so Working, Working…, Working… 24s all count, but Waiting/Idle/custom statuses don't), and ChatBroker chats whose agent participant is currently typing (the built-in AI chat).
Test plan:
printf '\e]21337;status=Working;indicator=#ffa500\a'and confirm orange icon with count 1; repeat in more panes to climb, + at 10 or more.printf '\e]21337;status=;indicator=\a'and confirm idle returns.printf '\e]21337;status=Waiting;indicator=#5f87ff\a'and confirm the badge does not tick up. Same withstatus=Idle.