A while back I built a Windows cursor that moves with physics (it rotates to point where you're heading, the loading spinners spin, the text caret wobbles like jelly) - it did well on r/csharp and r/Worms. But the part I actually use every day turned out to be dumber and more useful: **when Claude Code is waiting on me, the cursor tells me.** I fire off a long task, alt-tab away, and instead of babysitting the terminal or coming back two minutes late, a little Claude logo sprouts on my cursor the moment it needs input - and drops off when I take over.

How it works, briefly:

* It rides Claude Code's own **hooks** \- an installer drops a `command` hook into `~/.claude/settings.json` (Notification, Stop, SessionStart…).
* When one fires, Claude runs `WormsCursor.exe hook --tool claude-code`, which pipes a one-line event to the already-running tray app and exits in under half a second - **fail-silent, so it can never hang or crash your session.**
* While an agent is waiting, the cursor grows a tiny Claude logo that dangles off it on the same pendulum physics. Start typing and it clears.
* **Multiple sessions stack:** if several are waiting at once, a small **+N** rides on the logo - so you see *how many* need you at a glance, not just *that* one does. (Handy if you run a few terminals / worktrees in parallel.)
* No polling, no scraping the terminal - it only reacts to real events.

The thing that surprised me while building it: that physics cursor is Windows-only at a really deep level. It rests on `SetSystemCursor` \- one system-wide cursor slot every app sees - and there's no clean public equivalent anywhere else. On macOS you can only do it via the private CoreGraphics APIs Apple breaks every release; on Wayland it's outright **forbidden by design** \- a client isn't allowed to touch the cursor outside its own window. So "port the moving cursor" is closer to impossible-by-design than a weekend of work. But the "agent is waiting" signal is a totally separate, much lower bar - it's just reacting to a hook - so a cross-platform version of *that* (a menu-bar blip, a notification, a dock bounce) is easy. The fun part and the useful part turned out to be cleanly separable.

Which makes me think the real question is bigger than a cursor: as we run more agents async, "**how do I know when the agent needs me?**" is becoming its own little UX gap. Bells, notifications, Slack pings - none really fit the "heads-down in another window" case, and a cursor is a weirdly good channel precisely because it's already under your eyes. So how do you all actually know when Claude's done or blocked on you - hooks, a custom notifier, a second monitor, pure vibes? I don't think the good answers here have been built yet.

My cursor sprouts a Claude logo the moment Claude Code is waiting on me - so I stop babysitting the terminal