Top or bottom
A pill that fits its content or the full width of the edge. Reserve space, float, or auto-hide.
Your app dock. Extendable with your own plugins.
Pin apps, folders, files and websites to one edge of the screen. Add plugins for whatever you want to keep an eye on: clock, system, media, weather, crypto and todos come built in, more are in the store, and a coding agent can write you a new one over MCP. It runs beside your system taskbar: no window list, no tray.
Linux · Windows · macOS (beta)
works with Claude Code · Codex · Grok · any MCP client
Transcript
This is smabar. Your app dock. Drag in what you need: apps, folders, websites. Make it yours: top or bottom, fisheye if you like, and themes to your taste. The special part: it is fully extendable with your own plugins. Clock, system, todos come built in. And fully controllable over MCP. Connect Claude Code, Codex, Grok or whatever agent you run locally. Tell it what you want to see and it writes the plugin, right into your bar. Show what you want: a flyout, an image, a notification. Your desktop, extended. Free, at smabar.com.
Apps, folders, files, websites. One edge of the screen.
Drop them onto the bar or pin them in Settings. Website icons come from the site itself; no icon service ever sees your links. Move the pointer along the bar and the fisheye magnifies the tile under it.
Fisheye
The tile under the pointer grows, its neighbours a little less. Scale and reach are sliders; scale one switches it off.
Behind your windows
Keep the bar above everything, or put it behind your windows and leave the plugins on the desktop.
Plugins: a tile, a flyout, a popup.
A plugin is a tile on the bar, a flyout for the details and a popup when something happens. Clock, system, media, weather, crypto and todos come built in; the store has more. Every plugin is its own process in its own folder, and you can read every line of it.
Any language
A plugin is a process that speaks JSON-RPC over stdin and stdout, one message per line: it receives its settings, renders HTML and hears about clicks. The exec runtime starts whatever program you name, in Go, Rust, Node or a shell script.
Python without setup
smabar ships uv and installs its own Python under ~/.smabar/tools/, separate from anything on your system. Dependencies go in the script header (PEP 723) and install on first start. The SDK (MIT) handles the protocol; the bundled plugins are the reference.
~/.smabar/plugins/<id>/ holds the code, ~/.smabar/data/<id>/ its data, ~/.smabar/logs/ its log. Edit a file and the plugin reloads.
Controlled over MCP. Your agent builds plugins and uses them.
The bar runs an MCP server on localhost only. Connect Claude Code, Codex, Grok or any MCP client you run locally. It can do two things.
Build a plugin
Describe what you want to see. The agent reads the built-in guide, writes the files into ~/.smabar/plugins/ and the plugin runs without a restart. Every write answers with the plugin's warnings and render status, so the agent checks its own work.
claude codemcp · 127.0.0.1:7627
Show the next departures of bus 412 from Marktplatz on the bar. Count the minutes down and send a popup two minutes before.
plugin_guide
plugin_write_file · departures/smabar.json · valid · running
bar_screenshot
plugin_logs · clean
Done. The tile shows the next departure, the flyout the next three.
illustrative transcript · the tool names are real
new plugin, live without a restart
Use a plugin
A running plugin can register commands with JSON Schemas; the agent discovers them with plugin_commands and calls them with plugin_call. The bundled Todos plugin registers todos.list, todos.create, todos.complete and more, and the tasks stay in ~/.smabar/data/todos/. One paragraph in your project's CLAUDE.md, and your agent plans against the same list you see on the bar.
My tasks live in smabar's Todos plugin. Before planning, read them through the smabar MCP tool `plugin_call` (plugin `todos`, command `todos.list`). Create the next steps with `todos.create`, with a reminder where it helps, and complete finished ones with `todos.complete`.
MCP on http://127.0.0.1:7627/mcp, localhost only. Nothing leaves your machine.
Four themes built in. Yours is one description away.
A theme is one JSON file: colours, fonts, behaviour. Pick a bundled one, install one from the store, or describe a look and let your agent write it.
defaultdark · magnify
paperlight · calm
terminalmono · square
topbartop · full-width
Boring where it counts.
01
Every plugin is its own process. A crashing plugin never takes the bar with it.
02
Plugins deliver HTML, no JavaScript. The bar sanitises the markup and provides the interactions itself.
03
No cloud, no account. The MCP server listens on localhost only.
04
Plugin processes run with your user rights, so read a plugin before you install it. Source-available: read every line before you trust it.
Or install what someone else already built.
Plugins and themes live in public GitHub repositories; anyone can publish one and submit it to the catalog. The catalog is signed, the stars come from GitHub, and the app asks before it installs anything.
newsletter
A mail when something ships.
Release notes and notable additions to the store, a few times a year. Double opt-in, one click to leave.
Put something useful at the edge of your screen.
Free. No account. Everything stays on your machine.