Built a desk light with animated eyes that tells me when my AI coding agent needs me (ESP32-S3, LilyGO T-Display S3 AMOLED)

I kept missing permission prompts from my coding agents. Claude would sit there for 20 minutes waiting on a "yes" in a background window while I thought it was working. So I built a little desk status light with a pair of animated eyes. Working (blue, focused eyes reading back and forth): the agent is busy Needs you (amber, curious eyes and a bobbing "?"): a permission prompt or question is waiting, and the message is shown beside the eyes Your turn (green, happy ^ ^ eyes): the agent finished No sessions (lilac, asleep with Zzz): shows the board's IP It runs on a LilyGO T-Display S3 AMOLED. The eyes sit on the left with the state, project, timer and message beside them. It tracks several sessions at once and rotates through them, most urgent first. There's also support for the T-QT Pro now, which is smaller and cuter if you want something tiny on the desk. Hooks for Claude Code, Cursor and Codex are installed with one script. Cursor has no hook yet that fires while it waits for your approval, so Cursor sessions only show working and your turn. If you want that too, there's a feature request on the Cursor forum you can vote on: https://forum.cursor.com/t/fire-a-hook-when-agent-waits-for-command-tool-approval/166947 Setup works from a phone: the board opens its own WiFi hotspot, you connect, pick your network, and it shows its IP on screen. You can give it a fixed IP and an update password, and after that firmware updates go over WiFi with no USB needed. Open source, MIT: https://github.com/AncientiCe/agent-needs-you Happy to answer questions, and I'd love ideas for other boards or animations. Just a hobby project, I'm not affiliated with LilyGO. submitted by /u/palacememorycom [link] [comments]