scuttlarrv0.7.0The terminal developer’s desktop for macOS.
A menubar replacement, a launcher that dresses up as a shell prompt, one theme rendered into everything, and a keyboard-first way of working — with tiling, de-shined defaults and a fast shell a toggle away. The Omarchy shape, without Linux. Install gets the bar and the launcher; the rest is a rung you turn on. Hit ⌥Space and run your Mac without touching the mouse.
This is not a screenshot — type in it
What it does
Launch, fuzzy & frecency-ranked
Apps and System Settings panes, scored fzf-family and ranked by your actual usage. Ties break on frecency, never the other way around.
Bang mode to your terminal
!git status ⏎ hands the command to Ghostty, verbatim. No wrapper, no escaping surprises.
Hackable in any language
Drop an executable in ~/.config/scuttlarr/scripts/ — its trigger word is live before you switch back to the panel. json and ip ship bundled.
Clipboard, math, emoji
clip keeps 200 text items and never records concealed types. 2*(14.5+3) computes inline; :fire picks emoji. Enter copies.
Quicklinks & URLs
Type a URL to open it, or add it in-panel with a name, browser and favicon. {query} templates give you yt cute otters ⏎.
Settings you can edit by hand
A real settings window and a watched, hot-applied config.json. Both stay in sync; neither is the second-class citizen.
The bar
An Omarchy-flat menubar replacement: no boxes, dim glyphs, one solid block on the active workspace. ~19 MB marginal memory, themed by the same tokens as the launcher.
TUI panels in the launcher
wifi ⏎, dns ⏎, usage ⏎ and more — keyboard-driven panels inside the launcher window. Esc walks back; focus returns exactly where it was.
Agent monitoring
Claude and Codex sessions as bar cells, boxed by tmux session, ordered by tab. Blocked breathes red; click a cell to jump straight to the pane.
Token usage, locally
usage ⏎ parses agent journals on disk: tokens by day and model, plus opt-in account limits with reset countdowns. No token refresh, ever.
? agent mode
Press ? and ask — streamed answers from your own claude or codex CLI in a caged child process. Off by default.
The desktop layer
Tiling via AeroSpace with a config scuttlarr writes for you — a modifier, gaps, workspaces, done. Opt-in JankyBorders in your theme’s accent, and the pre-Tahoe window corners back if you want them. Flip manage off and the toml is yours.
Screenshots to your agent
ss ⏎ — a grid of your latest captures, newest first. Enter puts the file on the clipboard; ⌘V into Claude, Cursor or a browser. The whole feature is ⌘Space ss ⏎ ⌘V.
14 themes, one colors.toml
From gruvbox to rose-pine, in Omarchy’s colors.toml format verbatim, so any Omarchy theme ports by copying one file. Turn the Theme rung on and it styles Ghostty, tmux, your prompt, delta and Claude Code too; a light/dark pair follows macOS, a schedule, or a Focus.
Zero permissions, opt-in everything
No Accessibility, no Full Disk Access, no telemetry, no update pings. The launcher core's only network call is user-initiated: fetching a favicon the moment you add a quicklink.
The bar — your menubar, replaced
One flat 30px strip, inspired by Omarchy: no boxes, dim glyphs, a solid block marking the active workspace. Modules live in explicit left / center / right zones under bar.layout, and notched displays get their own arrangement. Rust pushes snapshots at 1 Hz — the webview is a pure listener.
Agent monitoring
If you run coding agents in tmux all day, the bar is their status board. Every session is one glyph, grouped by tmux session and ordered by tab. Hover a cell for the task and state; click it and scuttlarr drops you into the exact pane.
Also a panel: type agents ⏎ in the launcher for the full keyboard-driven list.
Picking a launcher and a bar
| scuttlarr | Raycast | Alfred | Sketchybar | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| feels like | a shell prompt | a polished app | a polished app | a status bar |
| extensions | any executable in a folder | React + a store | workflows | shell plugins |
| menubar replacement | yes — bar + launcher | no | no | bar only |
| theming | one palette, everywhere — terminal, tmux, prompt, macOS Focus | its own window | its own window | the bar, by hand |
| license | MIT, open source | closed, freemium | closed, paid Powerpack | open source |
All fine tools, and all of them do things scuttlarr doesn’t. The launcher and the bar are where they overlap; the rungs above them — Desktop, Theme, Machine — are what none of them try. This table is about temperament, not superiority.
Install
Apple Silicon · v0.7.0 signed & notarized$ brew install mitchmalone/tap/scuttlarrbrew upgrade. The recommended install.First run: the panel appears once with the hint line, a default config is written to ~/.config/scuttlarr/config.json, and scuttlarr registers as a login item (toggleable in settings). The bar is off by default — flip bar.enabled when you’re ready to retire your menubar.
Building in the open — the fold shipped, the rungs are filling in
v0.4 is where scuttlarr became a control surface: bar, panels, agents, the desktop layer — all in daily use. v0.5 is the plugin release: a module API for the bar, multi-display, settings inside the panels. Explicit non-goals hold: no file search, no snippets, no granted permissions. What once read not a distro is now the rungs: bar + launcher on install, then Desktop, Theme and Machine as toggles you turn on — the Omarchy shape, without Linux.