Status and notifications
Installing the hooks, reading the dots, and being told when an agent needs you.
An agent working for two minutes and an agent that stopped ninety seconds ago waiting for permission look identical from outside. Nermalfixes that by letting the agent say which one it is.
Installing the hooks
Settings → Agents lists every agent that can report status, with an Install button beside each:
| Agent | |
|---|---|
| Claude Code · Codex · TraeCode · Copilot CLI · OpenCode · Pi · Grok Build · Oh My Pi · Gemini · Droid · Qwen Code · Goose · Kimi Code · Qoder CLI · Crush | Hooks available |
| Aider · Amp · Cursor · Auggie · Hermes · Vibe · Antigravity | Detected and labelled, but no status channel yet |
Installing writes into that agent's own configuration directory. Once installed the row grows a second Uninstall button beside the first, which itself becomes Reinstall — or Update, against an Outdated state, when Nermal ships a newer hook.
Crush ships only a PreToolUse hook today. It is enough to remember the
session for resume, but there is no turn boundary behind it, so a Crush pane
carries no status dot and Nermalwait times out rather than returning.
The hooks only do anything inside Nermal. Running the same agent in another terminal is unaffected.
Hooks are installed per machine. Once a second machine is linked, a row of chips appears above the table to pick which one you are looking at, and the table then shows that machine's agents — so a dev box gets its hooks installed the same way, from the same screen.
The status dot
Every tab chip and sidebar row carries a dot:
| Dot | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 🔵 Blue | Working |
| 🟠 Amber | Needs your input — a permission prompt, a question |
| 🟢 Green | Done with this turn |
The same three states are what Nermalagents reports as working / waiting /
done, and what Nermalwait blocks on. A fourth state,
idle, carries no dot — it is an agent that has not started a turn.
Notifications
Two, both following your Settings → Window & Tabs → Notifications policy:
- "needs your permission…" the moment an agent blocks on you
- "finished after 42s" at the end of a turn
Which means that by default — When unfocused — you are told the instant you are the bottleneck, and left alone while you are watching.
The tray icon
Nermalkeeps a status item in the system tray (menu bar on macOS). It flips to an attention state the moment any agent anywhere needs input, so you can see it without the window in front of you.
Its menu lists every agent pane with its brand avatar and status dot — click one to reveal it — and also holds the notification policy switch and Quit and Stop Server….
Turn it off with Settings → Window & Tabs → Show tray icon
(show_tray_icon: false).
Sending an agent some context
Two command-palette entries hand what is in front of you to the agent running in the pane, as a ready-made prompt:
| Command | Sends |
|---|---|
| Agent: Send Selection | The current terminal selection |
| Agent: Send Git Diff for Review | The repository's git diff |
If nothing recognisable is running, Nermalsays "No running coding agent found" rather than typing into your shell.