Shiplings Guides Roadmap Download

Shiplings / Guides

What a menu bar companion is, and why it is not a dashboard

A small character lives in the corner of your screen and changes posture as your agents work. There is no window to open, no graph to read and no history to catch up on. It is a glance, not a tab.

Updated 24 September 2026

The dashboard problem

Every tool you already run can show you a panel. The panel is not the hard part; remembering to look at it is. A dashboard asks you to context switch to find out whether a context switch was warranted, which is the trade that made you open it in the first place.

A companion inverts that. It is already in view, so it costs nothing to read, and it only speaks up when speaking up is worth the interruption.

What the character is doing

PostureMeaning
WorkingAn agent is running.
WatchingSomething is in flight: a deploy, a build.
Needs youAn agent has stopped and is waiting on an answer.
FinishedThe run ended.
CelebratingSomething shipped.
ErrorA run or a deploy failed.
Resting, asleepNothing is happening, and it is quiet.

It has to be free to run

The character is on screen all day, so it stays under 1% CPU. Frames are drawn once, cached, and swapped as layer contents rather than redrawn every tick. A companion that costs you battery is a companion you close.

And every win leaves as a picture

A celebration can be exported as a GIF or an MP4 sized for a team channel. That is free in every tier, watermarked, because a shared celebration is how anybody hears about this at all and charging for it would close the only door.

Questions

Does it get in the way of what I am doing?

It never takes focus and never blocks the screen. It can be pinned to a corner, dragged anywhere, hidden during full screen, and silenced for specific apps.

Can I choose the character?

Yes. Some ship free, and the rest come with the lifetime unlock.

Is it a pet, or a tool?

It is a status display that happens to be alive. Nothing about it needs feeding, and it never asks you to come back.

Download Shiplings for macOS