Capabilities

Notifications, Menu Bar & Tray

Your apps can reach you even when their window is closed. They can post notifications to Notification Center and live in the macOS menu bar with their own icon and menu. Ask the agent for any of this in plain language and it wires it up.

Notifications

Apps can send real macOS notifications, the kind that slide in at the top right and collect in Notification Center. A notification can carry a title, a subtitle, and a body, so you can say a CI failed, a timer ended, or a download is ready.

You can also make them richer:

Sound: Play the default alert sound, a named system sound, or stay silent.
Action buttons: Add buttons right on the notification so the user can act without opening the app.
Inline reply: Let the user type a quick response directly from the notification, with your own placeholder text.
Click handling: Respond when the user clicks the notification, for example by opening the app to the right place.
Urgency: Mark a notification as low, normal, or critical.

Example prompt

When my pomodoro timer finishes, send a notification that says "Break time" with a "Start next session" button.

Managing Delivered Notifications

Apps can also tidy up after themselves. They can look back over the notifications they have delivered that are still sitting in Notification Center, remove a specific one, clear them all, or clear a whole group at once. Related notifications can be grouped under a shared title, so a busy app does not flood Notification Center with separate banners.

Apps can place an icon in the macOS menu bar. This is ideal for an app you want close at hand without a window taking up space, a clipboard tool, a quick-capture note, a status readout you glance at.

Clicking the icon can open a dropdown menu that you fill out with:

Menu items that run an action when chosen.
Submenus for grouping related items.
Separators to divide a long menu into sections.
Checkmarks to show which options are on.
Keyboard shortcuts shown next to items.

The menu bar icon can also show a tooltip on hover and respond differently to a left versus right click.

Icons and Color

Menu bar icons follow the macOS convention: provide an icon and the system renders it to match the menu bar, adapting between light and dark automatically. You can also use full-color images where it makes sense, and tint menu items to draw attention to a particular state. Lean on the system styling first so your app feels at home in the menu bar.