A notification when a chat needs you

You start a big refactor, switch to email, and twenty minutes later you check back. The agent finished nineteen minutes ago. Or worse: two minutes in, it asked "may I run this command?" and has been waiting ever since.

We heard this from everyone who runs more than one agent, and we lived it. So Shuriken sends a notification on your computer when a chat needs you: when it asks for approval, when it asks a question, and when it is done or stops on an error. For every project and every chat, in one place.

The DIY route, fairly#

You don't need Shuriken for a basic "done" ping. Both big CLIs can do it on their own, and if you run one agent in one terminal, this may be all you need.

Claude Code: hooks#

Claude Code has hooks: commands it runs on events. According to Anthropic's hooks reference, two are useful here:

• Stop runs "when Claude finishes responding".
• Notification runs "when Claude Code sends a notification", with matchers such as permission_prompt and idle_prompt, so you can react to approvals and to Claude waiting on you.

Point either at a notifier: osascript -e 'display notification …' or terminal-notifier on a Mac, notify-send on Linux, a PowerShell toast on Windows. A few lines in your settings file and you get a banner.

Codex: notify#

Codex has a notify setting that runs a program of your choice. OpenAI's configuration docs say it currently fires on agent-turn-complete, with the turn's details passed as JSON. The Codex terminal UI also has built-in notifications for finished turns and approval requests.

Where DIY gets thin#

The DIY route works per CLI, per machine. Once you run several agents across several projects, the gaps show:

• each agent needs its own setup, and each computer needs it again;
• a banner says "done" but not which project, which chat or which account;
• clicking it doesn't take you to the chat;
• at best a CLI knows whether its own terminal window has focus, not whether you are already reading that chat somewhere else.

What Shuriken does#

Every chat in Shuriken, whatever agent it runs and whichever of your computers or servers it runs on, reports to one place. So one notification system covers all of it.

• Needs you: a chat asks for permission or an answer.
• Chat done or failed: a chat finishes its turn, or stops on an error.
• Account events: a source signs out and needs you to sign in again, a device goes offline while agents work, a device can't update, a new sign-in to your Shuriken account.
• Power: the charger comes out, or the battery runs low, while agents work.

Each event can be switched on or off, with its own sound (Chime, Glass, Pop, Bell and others, or Silent). On a computer, Shuriken can also read alerts aloud. There's a Send a test button, so you know your system hasn't quietly blocked notifications. If it has, Shuriken tells you, with a button to open System Settings.

Three details we are fond of:

• No ping for the chat you're looking at. A desktop notification comes only when you are not on that chat.
• Mute a project. A noisy experiment can stay quiet from its menu, while everything else still reaches you.
• Answered elsewhere, gone everywhere. Answer a question on one device and the banner on the others is taken back.

Your choices are saved to your account, so every computer you sign in to behaves the same. And notifications sit next to Activity, which shows what each chat is doing right now. That's handy when you run many agents in parallel.

On your phone#

Today, your phone uses Shuriken's web app, at app.shuriken.sh in any browser, and you can add it to your home screen. Open it and every chat, the queue and its questions are there, so you can answer an approval from the bus.

Installed to your home screen, the web app already gets account alerts as pushes: a device offline, a server that can't update, a source that was signed out, a new sign-in. What it doesn't promise yet is a push when a chat needs you. That comes with the native iOS and Android apps, which we are building from scratch and plan to ship in November 2026. Until then, the phone page shows what works today, and our guide to Claude Code notifications on your phone covers the options, ours and others.

If your agents spend more time waiting for you than working, try Shuriken and let them tap you on the shoulder.