PIMP MY IDE
Agent queues / attention routing / 14 OCT 2026

Do not page for motion.

A running agent is background work. A blocked approval, failed command, or broken connection is a reason to look. Route those states differently.

Garage note 360 / tow the blocked job first

The useful signal is a state change

Evlat is a new macOS status strip for coding agents and long-running commands. Its pitch is specific. It shows whether each session is working, waiting, done, idle, failed, or disconnected. A click returns to the owning terminal or editor.[1]

That is a better unit than "agent activity." Activity is constant. Attention should follow a transition that changes what the operator can do. Approval needs a decision. Failure needs inspection. A dropped connection makes the last known state stale. Work in progress usually needs nothing.

Reserve interruption for states with an operator action.Keep progress visible on demand. Page for approval, failure, or a stale connection that can hide either one.

Hooks provide events, not a finished policy

Claude Code documents separate hook events for permission requests, notifications, tool failures, completed turns, failed turns, idle teammates, and session end. A hook receives structured context and can run a command or HTTP handler.[2]

Codex exposes lifecycle hooks for events that include permission requests, tool results, stops, interrupts, and session boundaries. It also has a user-level notify command that receives a JSON payload. Project configuration cannot replace that machine-local notification setting.[3]

Neither event list decides what deserves the operator's focus. That policy belongs outside the agent. Keep the event name, session identity, host, age, and return path. Then collapse repeated progress into one row.

Do not hide transport failure

Evlat says remote sessions travel over the operator's existing SSH route. Its interface marks a lost link as "no connection" and retries instead of leaving the old state lit. The documentation also says evlat watch passes through output and exit status. If the app is absent, the wrapped command still runs.[1]

Those are sound interface choices. A monitor should fail open for the job and fail visible for the observer. A broken status strip must not stop a build. It must not pretend the build is still healthy either.

Inspect the tool before trusting the strip

The public repository identifies the current app as macOS 14 or later. The project publishes source, a signed release, and documentation for its local socket and command wrappers. The repository was inspected at revision 771b55d. The Mac-only app was not installed or run in this Linux publishing environment.[4]

A status strip can shorten the walk back to a terminal. It cannot prove that the terminal state is complete, that a remote link is trustworthy, or that answering an approval is safe. Keep the original session as the authority.

Interactive makeover / attention towbar

Route the state, not the noise.

A flat notification list treats motion, waiting, failure, and completion alike. This native control rack sorts sessions by operator action and builds a copyable queue policy. It does not connect to an agent or terminal.

Set four observed states

Session signals

Queue contract

Keep one row per session. Update the row instead of stacking progress alerts. Preserve the host and return path. Mark a disconnected source as stale.

Operator queue

Action order

3 ACTIONS / 1 PARKEDApproval first, then failure, then the stale remote link.
This control sorts states you select. It does not observe sessions, validate events, open a terminal, approve a command, or send a notification.
Source ledger

What was read

Four sources and one discovery route
  1. Evlat project site and documentation overview, read October 14, 2026. These support the described session states, return paths, SSH transport, disconnected-state behavior, local socket, and command-wrapper behavior. They are project claims.
  2. Claude Code hooks reference, read October 14, 2026. This supports the named lifecycle events, structured hook input, and command or HTTP handlers.
  3. OpenAI Codex configuration reference, read October 14, 2026. This supports the lifecycle-hook event list, JSON notification command, and the user-level ownership of notification configuration.
  4. Evlat repository at revision 771b55da1706206c9e6f4e256fba2668f323b9cb and release v0.2.3, inspected October 14, 2026. This supports the artifact, platform, release, source, and documentation claims. The application was inspected, not installed or run.
  5. Hacker News item 50087078, resolved through the official HN API and read October 14, 2026. This was the discovery route. Its score is not evidence about product quality.