NotchFuel puts AI usage in the MacBook notch

The awkward part of using several AI coding tools is not choosing a model. It is remembering which allowance is close to its limit while the work is still moving.

NotchFuel is a small open-source macOS app built for that moment. It places compact usage gauges beside the MacBook camera notch for Anthropic’s Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, and Grok CLI. Move the pointer onto the notch and the island expands downward with the usage windows and reset times. Move away and it collapses again.

The display can show either usage remaining or usage consumed. A notification threshold can be set from 50% to 95%, so the app can warn before a provider window is exhausted instead of becoming another number that needs watching.

The useful boundary is local sessions, not another account

NotchFuel does not ask the user to create a new account or paste provider keys into a separate service. It reuses sessions already maintained by the supported command-line tools, reads those credentials without modifying them, and makes read-only HTTPS requests to the providers’ usage endpoints.

Anthropic credentials are read from macOS Keychain. Codex and Grok credentials are read from their local authentication files. The app has no analytics, account system, or hosted backend, and it does not log or copy the credentials into its own storage. The source is public, so that boundary can be inspected rather than taken on trust.

This design still has a trade-off: the app must be able to read the same local session material as the CLIs. Anyone who does not want a second local process to have that access should keep using the providers’ own dashboards or usage commands. Provider endpoints and response shapes can also change, which may require a NotchFuel update even when the interface remains the same.

Small enough to stay out of the way

The notch is a good home for this information because usage is ambient state. It matters, but it should not need a full dashboard, a permanent window, or a browser tab.

The first public build keeps the feature set narrow:

• Native Apple-silicon macOS app for macOS 14 or newer.
• Claude Code, Codex, and Grok CLI usage in one place.
• Remaining and used views.
• Hover expansion with reset times and segmented fuel gauges.
• Configurable macOS notifications for usage thresholds.
• Signed update packages and a signed update feed through Sparkle, delivered from GitHub Releases.

The current release is ad-hoc signed rather than notarized with an Apple Developer ID, so macOS may show a Gatekeeper warning on the first installation. That makes this an early open-source release, not yet the frictionless installation expected from a polished commercial Mac app.

If a provider dashboard is enough, use it. If only one CLI is in the daily workflow, its native usage display may be simpler. NotchFuel is for the narrower case: an Apple-silicon Mac, several AI coding subscriptions, and a preference for seeing the runway without leaving the current task.

The code and build instructions are in the NotchFuel repository. The current DMG is available from the NotchFuel 1.4.0 release.