Lil Agents are tiny AI companions that live on your macOS dock: two animated characters, Bruce and Jazz, stroll back and forth above the dock, and clicking one opens a friendly terminal where you can chat with leading AI coding assistants. The open-source project has about 1,450 stars on GitHub and was actively developed in 2026.
AI coding tools usually live in stark terminal windows. Lil Agents wraps them in something playful: characters rendered from transparent HEVC video who walk, think, and vibe above your dock while your agents work. Click a character and a themed popover terminal opens, connected to the AI CLI of your choice. The app supports Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, GitHub Copilot, and Google Gemini CLIs, and you can switch between them from the macOS menubar depending on the task or your subscriptions. Four visual themes — Peach, Midnight, Cloud, and Moss — change the look of the companions and terminal. It is a small, single-purpose app: it does not replace the underlying agents, it gives them a home on your desktop that is pleasant to glance at throughout the day. Downloads are available from the project’s website, lilagents.xyz.
Lil Agents is free and open source under the MIT license. The app itself costs nothing; you simply use it with the AI coding subscriptions or accounts you already have for the underlying command-line tools.
Mac developers who spend their day with AI coding assistants and want a lighter, more personable way to keep them at hand — especially anyone who enjoys small, polished desktop toys that make serious tools feel friendly.