Notifications & menu bar

Kanbell tells you the moment an agent needs you. You get one notification, a badge, and a menu bar panel that lists every session waiting for you. You can answer many Claude Code questions straight from that panel.

Why it helps

A terminal never notifies. An agent asks a question or wants a permission, and it sits there while you work in another window. You come back twenty minutes later to find it stopped at the first step. Kanbell turns that silent wait into a signal you see.

What you get

• A state per session: Working, Needs your answer, Finished · to review, Your turn, Finished.
• One system notification per session that needs you, never for the session you are already looking at.
• A badge on the Dock and on the menu bar icon.
• A menu bar panel (system tray on Linux) that lists sessions with a question, a permission request, a wait in their terminal, or a finished turn.
• Answers to Claude Code AskUserQuestion questions from the panel.
• Permission requests shown in full, with the whole command.
• For a finished turn: Reply to {title} (one line) or Seen.

How it works

1. Start an agent as usual. Kanbell tracks its state through hooks it adds to that session.
2. When the agent needs you, a notification appears and the badge counts it.
3. Open the menu bar panel. Answer the question, open the permission, or reply to a finished turn.
4. Or press ⌘⇧J (Linux: Ctrl+Shift+J) to go to the next session waiting for you.
5. Tune it in Settings › Notifications: Also when an agent finishes its turn, Sound, and Open the panel when an agent needs your answer (it opens without taking keyboard focus).

Works with

States, notifications and the panel work for Claude Code, Codex and Gemini CLI. Answering questions from the panel is Claude Code only (version 2.1.293 or newer). Codex and Gemini CLI questions are answered in the terminal. Shells never notify.

Good to know

• The panel answers single-choice questions (up to 4 at once, previews only when there is one) and one multi-select question without previews. Other forms show "This question has to be answered in the Terminal."
• Permissions can be opened from the panel, not approved there.
• Reply to {title} is offered only when the agent is idle.
• Codex: trust Kanbell's "session flags" hooks once with /hooks, never "Trust all". Gemini CLI: the folder must be trusted, with hooks enabled.
• Linux: the tray icon needs a desktop that provides a tray. Ubuntu does. Plain GNOME needs the AppIndicator extension.
• Kanbell does not write to ~/.claude, ~/.codex or ~/.gemini.

Step by step: Notifications.