How Grinote works

What is Grinote?

Grinote is a native macOS app that lives around the notch. It shows coding-agent status at a glance, lets you approve tools without opening Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, Antigravity, and other coding agents, and keeps a private clipboard shelf one hover away.

After you buy and activate a license ($29, one-time), the app runs on your Mac. Clipboard content stays on your machine.

What do the beaver states mean?

A quiet beaver sits in the compact notch chrome:

• Ready — brown and still. Nothing is running.
• Working — it chews while an agent is busy.
• Your turn — turns green when the task is done.

Hover the notch to expand the shelf.

How do agent approvals work?

The Agent tab lists local sessions in one compact list — project, current activity, and status. When the list grows, it scrolls inside the same surface.

When an agent needs permission, Grinote shows an approval card in the notch with Deny, Allow (once), and Always (for that tool in that project) — so you can answer without leaving flow.

Each session row also has a contextual action:

• Monitor — follow a busy session.
• Respond — open the approval or question prompt.
• Jump — return to a finished session.

The app switcher jumps between Cursor, Terminal, Xcode, and Finder without leaving the shelf.

How does the clipboard shelf work?

Three spaces stay stable when you reopen the shelf:

• Agent — sessions and approvals.
• Recent — automatic inbox of what you copy (about 20 visible items).
• Saved — clips you star on purpose. Saving removes an item from Recent.

Typical flow:

• Copy — ⌘C anywhere. Grinote captures a clip into Recent and can flash COPIED on the notch.
• Hover — move to the notch. Browse, search by content or source app, and filter (All, Text, Links, Code, Media, Colors, Files). Screenshots are searchable via local Vision OCR. Hex colors show as swatches — pick any pixel with ⌃⌘⇧C.
• Click — click a clip to copy it again. Space opens a preview. ⌘+click toggles multi-select; ⇧+click selects a range like a folder. Backspace deletes the highlighted clip (confirmation is optional in Settings). Esc clears a multi selection first, then folds the panel.

Capture can be paused from the shelf. Screen text capture (⌃⌘⇧T) turns a selected region into a pasteable text clip — all recognition stays on your Mac.

Is Grinote private?

Yes. Clipboard history and agent UI state stay on your Mac. Sensitive patterns can be filtered. Pause stops capture when you need a clean desk.

The website account is only for purchase, license delivery, and download — not for syncing your clips. See the Privacy Policy for site data.

How do I buy and activate Grinote?

1. Create an account and buy Grinote on grinote.app/buy.
2. Open Account for your license key and the Mac download.
3. Install the app, then paste the key in Settings → License. Each license binds to one device.

Requirements: macOS 14+. Accessibility (and related permissions) may be requested so paste and global shortcuts work.

Frequently asked questions

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