| name | verify |
| description | Build, launch, and observe Claude Status Light end-to-end — drive the hook with fake payloads and screenshot the menu bar / floating panel. |
Verifying Claude Status Light
The surface is pixels: the menu bar mascot, the floating panel, and the
dropdown menu, all fed by hooks/status-hook.sh writing files under
~/.claude/status-light/sessions/.
Recipe
swift build, then launch .build/debug/ClaudeStatusLight &.
The user's installed copy (~/Applications/Claude Status Light.app)
reads the same sessions dir — leave it running; tell the instances
apart by giving the dev build the floating panel:
defaults write ClaudeStatusLight showFloatingWindow -bool true
(unbundled dev binary uses the ClaudeStatusLight defaults domain;
the installed bundle does not).- Drive states through the real hook with a throwaway session id:
printf '{"session_id":"verify-demo","cwd":"/tmp/demo"}' | bash hooks/status-hook.sh working
(also: attention, idle, agent-start, agent-stop, end;
PreToolUse payloads carry "tool_name":"...", Notification payloads
carry "message":"...").
- Wait ~2s (1s poll timer), then screenshot.
screencapture -x needs
to run unsandboxed (sandboxed → "could not create image from
display"). Crop the top-right with sips and upscale to read the
18px icons:
sips -c 400 1400 --cropOffset 0 $((W-1400)) shot.png --out crop.png
- Clean up:
... | bash hooks/status-hook.sh end, kill the dev
instance, defaults delete ClaudeStatusLight showFloatingWindow.
Gotchas
- Running hook commands from a Claude Code session updates that
session's own light too — your real session appears in captures,
and permission prompts flip it red mid-capture.
- Hook tests:
bash Tests/hook_test.sh. Swift tests: bash scripts/test.sh (plain swift test fails to find the Testing
framework under Command Line Tools).
