SideNook turns a macOS terminal into an ambient companion: fast when you need it, quiet when you don’t. Designed to stay out of the way.
Claude
Claude Code
Figma
Cursor
GitHubIn AI-assisted workflows — Claude Code, Cursor, shell agents alongside Figma, Xcode, a browser — you alt-tab to a terminal dozens of times a day. Full windows eat screen space. No terminal was designed to be ambient.
SideNook is that terminal. Always there, never in the way.Inspired by the iOS volume HUD — same surfacing-when-needed, vanishing-when-not principle.
Fig. 01 — macOS terminal vs. SideNook v1.0. One you tolerate. One that feels designed for you.
Problem 01
Constant context-switching
Alt-tabbing breaks flow. Full terminal windows steal space.
Problem 02
Desktop-bound
Terminals assume a stationary setup. They don't follow you.
Problem 03
No ambient mode exists
Every terminal demands attention. None were designed to be secondary.
Three phases. The animation came before the terminal — on purpose.
01 · Phase 1
First milestone: the animation with no terminal behind it — just the pill, the spring, the collapse. A sluggish animation would’ve undermined the promise from the first interaction. Spring parameters (stiffness 280, damping 22) were iterated in Figma first, then tuned in code. The hit area is 14pt — wider than the visible 6pt pill — so the interaction catches without requiring precision.
Status Indicator
A subtle dot shows connection status, running processes, and available updates — visible even when fully collapsed.
Why: Nothing blocks silently. That principle made the status indicator the hardest feature. The states looked simple on paper; making them reliable was not.
02 · Phase 2
Focus routes to the terminal on expand, back to your app on collapse. Making that handoff invisible and reliable was the hardest design + engineering problem in the project. Users will never notice it — and that’s the point.
CL Notes
A persistent monospaced notepad built into the panel. Jot commands without leaving your terminal.
Why: When Claude Code generates a command you’ll reuse, you shouldn’t need another app to save it.
Command Line Help
A searchable command reference from a markdown file. Click any row to run it in the active terminal.
Why: Claude Code generates commands I don’t know yet. Googling them breaks flow. A local reference keeps me in the terminal.
03 · Phase 3
Drag to any edge (panel adapts geometry automatically), multi-tab, resize handles, pin-to-stay. A panel dragged to the right edge and pinned open while resizing is still one mental model. Everything composes; nothing surprises.
Multitask
Run multiple terminal sessions side by side. Watch logs, edit configs, run commands without juggling windows.
Why: Running Claude Code, watching builds, editing configs — one session isn’t enough. Split panes keep context without spawning more windows.
Personalize
Curated themes or custom color palettes. Adjustable opacity, blur, and font controls — every visual element is tunable.
Why: Coordinating SideNook’s accents with Claude Code’s own color system — across both appearances — required a full token architecture. No hex values in any component.
Scope growth
Scope grew organically as each phase revealed the next. Features weren’t added from a wishlist — they earned their place through use. The PRD was a starting point, not a contract.
v1.0 shipped April 23, 2026 — on timeline, now in testing with early users.
Zero screen space consumed when collapsed (6pt pill).
Hover-to-use in under 300ms.
Works on all Spaces, fullscreen apps, and Mission Control — no special configuration needed.
Designed in Figma with Claude Design, built entirely with Claude Code, including Figma MCP for design-to-code. Not AI as autocomplete — AI as a collaborator across every phase: design system decisions, interaction logic, implementation, iteration. The project is as much a proof of concept for AI-native development as it is a terminal tool.
Ship as a VS Code extension
Faster inside an existing app. But that ties SideNook to a single editor. The goal was a system-level toolthat works with any terminal-based agent — Claude Code, Cursor, SSH, whatever comes next.
Make it paid from day one
I built this to learn.Charging before the interaction pattern was proven would’ve been premature. Free now, donations welcome. A pro tier makes sense if the model proves out — but not until the core is undeniable.
Over-engineer the plugin system before shipping
A plugin architecture would be powerful — custom commands, integrations, themes. But building infrastructure before knowing what people want is how side projects die. Ship the terminal, learn from usage, then open the platform.
VoiceOver support for terminal output is complex but not optional. Flagged for v2. It shouldn’t have been.
The 300ms debounce was tuned by feel. It works — but I’d want real usage data before calling it final.
The product and the marketing site — I designed both, end to end. Check it out at sidenook.dev.