Claude Code is halfway through a task in your terminal when it suddenly stops and asks you to Allow a command. Meanwhile you’re scrolling your phone or reading something in another window. By the time you switch back and click, you’ve lost your train of thought.
Coucou turns that moment into a little companion that lives in your notch. A character called Mochi peeks out of the MacBook notch (or the top edge of the screen), keeps an eye on your AI coding agents, and lets you approve requests right there. Walk away and it follows you to your iPhone lock screen and Dynamic Island, or even to Android. Details checked on October 16, 2026.
What it looks like
The open-source repo is Louis-CFM/coucou, with about 5,310 stars at the time of writing and MIT-licensed code. The Coucou name, the Mochi character and the sound effects still belong to the author, Louis Raillé (see the license notes in the repo). Website: louis-cfm.github.io/coucou.
Mochi is a soft, rounded-square face that blinks, follows your cursor with its eyes and gets dizzy if you click it too many times. It isn’t just decoration: behind it is a set of hooks and plugins that push session status from Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI, Antigravity, OpenCode and others to the island.
Current platform support (per the GitHub releases):
- Mac: around v0.4.0 (
Coucou.zip), requires macOS 15+, built natively in Swift 6 and SwiftUI, and the author stresses it has zero third-party dependencies. - Windows / Linux: around 0.5.0 (
.msi/.exe, plus AppImage, deb and rpm), built on Tauri 2. The Windows build is not yet code-signed, so SmartScreen may complain. - iPhone: Live Activity, Dynamic Island, actionable notifications and Face ID to confirm Allow. It syncs with the Mac through your own iCloud, so no central Coucou server sees your project contents.
- Android: pairs with the Windows/Linux app over the same Wi-Fi network (with TLS certificate pinning) and is off by default. Notifications show at most the tool name, so full commands aren’t sprayed around.
How you’d use it during a normal day
The typical flow is short:
- Install the Mac or Windows/Linux build from Releases and open Coucou.
- In settings, click Install hooks for Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI and so on. It backs up and then merges files like
settings.json, and shows you the diff first. - Start your agent. When it needs permission, Mochi pops out of the notch or top bar and you hit Allow / Deny right there. Away from your desk, you can do the same from the iPhone lock screen or an Android notification (Allow usually requires biometrics).
- Want to talk to a session? The island shows progress and diffs, and you can send the next instruction by text or voice (exact capabilities vary a little by platform).
Since 0.4, the Mac side has grown into a real app window rather than just a notch toy:
- Flow dictation: hold a shortcut, speak, release to paste. The author is aiming for a Wispr Flow-like experience, open source and free. On Apple silicon you can download Parakeet for offline recognition (about 650 MB).
- Notetaker: records calls (without a bot joining the meeting) and produces per-speaker transcripts, a summary and action items. The audio is deleted once the notes are done.
- “OK Coucou”: a wake word that has Claude do things using your own Anthropic API key. The voice detection is said to stay on your machine.
You can also add “service pills” for Stripe, GitHub, Vercel, n8n and others to glance at status from the island or take safe, scoped actions such as re-running CI. It’s all optional, and keys go into Keychain, Windows Credential Manager or Secret Service.
A few product details that matter
- When Coucou isn’t running, its Claude Code hook simply exits and never blocks the agent. The README is explicit about this, which removes the worry that a monitoring tool will end up getting in your way.
- Privacy stance: no account and no analytics; the phone link is off by default; the iPhone uses a private CloudKit zone. It’s still worth checking which config files the hooks changed.
- App Store: the site says “coming soon”, so for now you install it from GitHub.
What’s good
- It turns “approve or check on the agent” from a window switch into a notch gesture, which feels great if you leave agents running for long stretches.
- The hand-off from Mac to iPhone (and from Windows/Linux to Android) is more complete than plain menu bar notifications.
- MIT-licensed and hackable, with a clean native Mac implementation and conservative privacy defaults.
- Version 0.4 layers in dictation, meeting notes and voice commands, so it works as a productivity shell even when you’re not babysitting an agent.
What’s lacking
- Requirements: the Mac app needs macOS 15+, and on Macs without a notch it sits in a small strip in the top bar, which isn’t as nice.
- The Windows build is unsigned and Linux depends on your compositor (on GNOME without layer-shell it falls back to an XWayland dock), so set expectations accordingly.
- If you don’t run coding agents, most of Coucou is irrelevant. Don’t install the whole thing just for the mascot.
- There are plenty of open issues (about 360+ at the time of writing). It’s growing fast alongside new features, and you may occasionally have to untangle a hook conflict yourself.
Who it’s for
- Heavy Mac users of Claude Code or Codex who approve requests a dozen times a day.
- Anyone who wants to allow or block risky commands from their phone when they’re away from the desk.
- People who want an open-source notch companion and don’t mind installing from GitHub.
If you only use ChatGPT in the browser and never give a terminal agent permissions, skip it. If you’re already burning half your day switching back to the terminal to click Allow, Coucou is worth an afternoon to try the full hook workflow.
Related reading
- Magpie: Switch Models for Claude Code and Codex from Your Menu Bar
- Braus: An Open-Source macOS Desktop Agent That Lets Claude Code and Codex Control Your Apps via MCP
