Agent Glow

Make the desktop show when your coding agents are busy: a dim spark in the bar that lights up with the number of working sessions, a breathing glow on the wallpaper, and a panel listing which agents are working and where.

Plugin

Field	Value
ID	fel/agent-glow
Entries	Service: watcher; bar widget: indicator; desktop widget: glow; panel: status

Requirements

Install python3 on PATH. The service spawns it once per poll to sample process CPU and read agent session data; when it is missing the service stays silent and the widgets simply report idle.

Agent activity is detected from /proc plus whatever session data is present on the machine, so no compositor-specific tooling is required. The opencode and claude session collectors light up only if those agents' local data exists (~/.local/share/opencode/opencode.db and ~/.claude/projects/).

Usage

Add the Agent Glow bar widget from the bar's Add-widget picker:

• Idle — a dim grey spark, with the number of live agent sessions if any are running (turn that off with Show in bar when idle).
• Working — a lit accent spark showing how many sessions are active.
• Hover — lists the hot sessions with their project and age.
• Left click — opens the session panel.

Add the Agent Glow desktop widget to place the glow on the wallpaper; it pulses while agents work and rests as a dim ring when they are idle.

Toggle the panel from anywhere:

noctalia msg panel-toggle fel/agent-glow:status

Settings

Setting	Type	Default	Description
Agent processes	string	opencode,claude,codex,gemini,aider,goose	Comma-separated process-name fragments to watch. Match is OR, case-insensitive.
Poll interval	int	2	Seconds between samples (1–30). Lower reacts faster and costs a little more CPU.
Session freshness	int	120	Seconds a session stays "working" after its transcript or database entry was last touched (15–900).
Heartbeat memory	int	45	Seconds a family stays lit after an external activity heartbeat (5–300).
CPU fallback threshold	int	15	Only for agent types without session data: percent of one core its process tree must burn to count as working (1–200). 100 = one full core.
Pulse speed	select	Normal	How fast the desktop glow breathes: Slow, Normal, or Fast.
Notify on change	bool	off	Send a notification when agents start or stop working.

Each bar widget instance also has:

Setting	Type	Default	Description
Show in bar when idle	bool	on	Keep the dim spark visible when nothing is running. When off, the tile only appears while agents work.

Notes

• No network access. Everything is read locally.
• Processes spawned: one python3 per poll for the service, and the agent processes the plugin only observes. The wallpaper frames are pre-rendered PNGs shipped in frames/; frames.sh is the ImageMagick script that made them at packaging time and is not run by the plugin.
• Files read: /proc (CPU and command lines), ~/.claude/projects/ transcripts, ~/.local/share/opencode/opencode.db (read-only), and $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/agent-glow.<family>.hb heartbeat files.
• Files written: $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/agent-glow-activity.json (mode 0600), a cache of the previous /proc sample — per-pid CPU ticks, parent pid, and the matched agent family, never command lines — plus session names. It is written only when XDG_RUNTIME_DIR is set; without it the probe persists nothing rather than drop a cache into a shared directory.
• Session titles and working directories are kept in the plugin's in-memory shared state and the cache above so the bar tooltip and panel can show them. Nothing leaves the machine.
• claude detection joins live claude --resume <uuid> processes to their transcript; the session name is the first user message of that transcript.
• An agent family can also report activity by touching $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/agent-glow.<family>.hb (for example from an agent hook); it stays lit for Heartbeat memory seconds after the last touch.