Keep your agents moving together.

Run Claude Code and Codex side by side across your projects. Real terminals, real sessions, real git, and a tab that tells you the moment an agent needs an answer.

Download Beacon View the source

v0.5.1 · macOS & Windows · Free, AGPL-3.0 · No account, no server

  • beacon-split Claude is working
  • docs-site Codex finished · nothing needed
  • api-gateway Waiting for an answer · 18 min

The expensive thing isn't switching tabs.

It's a permission prompt going unseen for twenty minutes. With three projects open you can't watch them all, and the one that stopped is the one costing you time.

Beacon reads each agent's own signals rather than guessing from terminal output, so a tab knows whether Claude is working, done, or stopped and waiting for you. The states differ in weight, not just colour, so you read them at a glance — and a project that starts waiting raises a system notification, once, and only when you're looking elsewhere.

  • WorkingClaude is running. Nothing needed.
  • DoneIt finished and has something for you.
  • WaitingStopped, and needs an answer.
  • StoppedNo session running here.

It runs the real thing.

A claude session and a shell per project, each in its own PTY. Colours, prompts, permissions, selection and scrolling are whatever the CLI does, because it is the CLI. Beacon doesn't reimplement Claude Code, doesn't bundle it, and never touches a credential: you sign in yourself, through Anthropic's own flow.

$ which claude /opt/homebrew/bin/claude ✓ found through your login shell ✓ started in a real PTY ✓ ANTHROPIC_* passed straight through

Claude Code and Codex, side by side.

Codex is a second agent, not a replacement. It gets a panel and conversation of its own, so it can work beside Claude Code in the same project. Turn on agent worktrees when each one needs a checkout of its own; your project directory remains yours.

ClaudeRefining the daemon CodexTests passed · ready to review separate worktrees · one project

Sessions outlive the window.

A background daemon owns every PTY. Close Beacon and your work keeps running; open it again and it reattaches, scrollback intact, nothing lost and nothing repeated. The window is a client, not the owner.

Window closed Daemon still running · 3 sessions Reopened · reattached

See what a session is costing.

How much of the five-hour allowance is left, and how full each project's context is — enough to decide which project to spend the rest of it on, and when a conversation is worth clearing. If Claude Code stops reporting, stale numbers are dimmed and labelled rather than left standing as current.

Five-hour allowance3h 12m left beacon-split context41% api-gateway context88%

Files, editor and git, at the size they deserve.

A file tree with the operations you expect, a light editor, a .env view that keeps values hidden until asked, and git status, diff, stage and commit. Deleting moves to the trash. There is no operation here that removes a file outright. An open buffer notices when Claude changes the file underneath it, and refuses to overwrite your typing.

crates/beacon-core/src/keymap.rs @@ -118,6 +118,11 @@ Action::PanelClose, + Action::FocusNextPanel, + Action::FocusPrevPanel, Action::ToggleFiles,

Keyboard first, and rebindable.

A command palette on ⌘K, quick open on ⌘P that respects the repo's own ignore rules, and every shortcut editable — click one, press the new one. Layouts are a tree of splits with four presets, and every divider drags. If something you do daily takes a trip through three menus, that's a bug.

›focus
Focus next panel⌥⌘→
Focus previous panel⌥⌘←
Focus Claude⌘1
Focus terminal⌘J

Where it runs.

Beacon runs on macOS and Windows. The rest is said plainly rather than promised.

  • macOS Available now

    Apple Silicon and Intel builds ship with every release. Apple Silicon is the one it's developed and tested on daily.

  • Windows Available now

    Windows 10 and 11 on x64, with an installer that asks for no administrator. Built and tested on Windows 11: the same daemon, the same sessions, a window with its own caption buttons, and Mica behind it.

  • Linux Being built

    Arch first, and it has never been built there, so nothing claims it works yet. The work is real and bounded: condition the window configuration by platform (vibrancy and the overlay title bar are macOS-only), then document the system dependencies. Everything underneath is already portable Rust, and Windows has shown where the differences live.

    This is the single most useful thing to help with. If you run Linux and want Beacon on it, that contribution is worth more than any other right now. Open an issue →

Get it.

Free, and free of everything that usually comes with free: no account, no telemetry in the app, no server, nothing to buy later.

Apple Silicon M1 and newer · .dmg · 6.5 MB Intel x86-64 · .dmg · 4.8 MB Windows 10 and 11 · x64 · installer

Version 0.5.1 · every release, with what changed in each

macOS will say it's damaged. It isn't.

The build isn't signed with an Apple Developer ID, so Gatekeeper refuses it the first time. Clear the quarantine flag once, after dragging Beacon to Applications:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine "/Applications/Beacon Split.app"

That removes a check macOS applies to software it cannot verify. It's a reasonable thing to do for a build you chose to download; it isn't something to do casually. Signing and notarisation need an Apple Developer membership, and are on the roadmap.

Windows will warn you once, too.

The installer isn't code-signed yet, so SmartScreen doesn't recognise it and says "Windows protected your PC" the first time. Choose More info, then Run anyway. It installs for your user only, and asks for no administrator.

Beacon needs Claude Code and git on your PATH. Install codex to add its panel and conversations. Beacon checks what a session needs the same way a session finds it — through your login shell, or on Windows the PATH itself. Updates arrive in place, and you're told what changed before anything happens.

Questions worth answering before you download.

What is Beacon Split?
A desktop workspace for working with Claude Code and Codex across several projects. Each project gets real agent sessions, terminals, a file tree with an editor, and git — and its tab tells you what is running, finished, or waiting for you.
Does Beacon Split cost anything?
No. It is free and open source under AGPL-3.0. There is no account, no telemetry in the app, no server and nothing to buy later.
Do I need my own Claude subscription?
Yes. Beacon runs Claude Code as Anthropic publishes it and never asks for, handles, stores or forwards a Claude credential. You sign in yourself and your usage is billed to you under your own agreement with Anthropic. Beacon is not affiliated with or endorsed by Anthropic.
Does Beacon Split work with Codex?
Yes. Codex is a second agent in Beacon, with its own panel and conversations. It can run beside Claude Code in the same project, and each agent can have a git worktree of its own when you turn that on.
Which platforms does Beacon Split run on?
macOS, on both Apple Silicon and Intel, and Windows 10 and 11 on x64. A Linux build is being worked on and has never been run, so nothing is claimed about it.
Why does macOS say the app is damaged?
The build is not signed with an Apple Developer ID, so Gatekeeper refuses it the first time. After dragging Beacon to Applications, clear the quarantine flag once with: xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine "/Applications/Beacon Split.app". Signing and notarisation need an Apple Developer membership and are on the roadmap.
Why does Windows warn about the installer?
The installer is not code-signed yet, so SmartScreen does not recognise it and says "Windows protected your PC" the first time. Choose More info, then Run anyway. It installs for your user only and needs no administrator.
Does Beacon Split send my code anywhere?
No. The Beacon app has no server and collects no telemetry: nothing about what you do in it leaves your machine. The only thing that does is whatever you send to Claude Code yourself, under your own Anthropic account. This website is the one place anything is counted — which buttons are clicked, visits to GitHub, how far the page is scrolled — without cookies or anything that identifies you, and never anything from the app.
What happens to a session when I close the window?
It keeps running. Sessions live in a background daemon rather than in the window, with their output buffered, so closing Beacon and reopening it puts you back where you were instead of starting again.
How is this different from a terminal with tmux, or from an editor?
Beacon does not reimplement Claude Code, Codex, a shell or an editor: it runs the real ones. What it adds is knowing what each project's agents are doing across every project at once, which a terminal multiplexer cannot tell you and an editor built around a human typing was not shaped for.

Built for one way of working. Yours to change.

Beacon was built for how one person works, and released for anyone who works the same way. It's AGPL-3.0: use it, change it, run it however you like. Distribute a modified version, including running one as a service, and you publish your changes under the same licence, so work put into Beacon stays available to everyone using it.

The repository is unusually documented on purpose. Every choice worth recording is written down with what it cost, so a change that contradicts one is welcome as long as it says which one and why it was wrong.

The people who made Beacon.

Credit, from the project itself. This list follows GitHub's contribution count on the default branch and updates after a contribution is merged.

  1. See everyone who has contributed on GitHub

Commit counts are one form of credit, not a measure of the value of a contribution.

Where help goes furthest

  1. The Linux build. Nobody has run it there yet. Bounded, and the highest value.
  2. Detached panels. Pop a panel into its own window. The daemon already makes this window management, not a session change.
  3. Per-workspace layouts and rearranging panels by hand.
  4. A dev-server state read honestly from the process tree, rather than guessed from output.
How to contribute Read the roadmap
You don't have to write Rust to help. The icon and the marks around it are placeholder work, and they look like it. If designing identity is your thing, Beacon would rather have your proposal than the placeholder. A direction, a sketch or a finished set, all welcome, and nothing to win. Open the design thread