Menu bar and notifications
Nightdesk keeps a status item in the menu bar and posts a banner when an agent does something worth looking at. Both exist so you can leave the window closed.
The status item
Section titled “The status item”The status item shows the fleet glyph and how many agents are working. The moment anything needs you, it swaps to a warning triangle and shows both counts, as in 2 · 1! — two working, one waiting on you.
Its menu lists Needs attention first, then Working. Choosing any row takes you to that agent’s card, reopening the window if you had closed it. Concierge appears in neither list, though a banner of its own still takes you to its pane.
When nothing is working and nothing needs you, the item is the glyph on its own, with no count, and the menu says All quiet.
The menu shows the most recent reading Nightdesk has, because opening a menu does not wake the app up. That reading is refreshed on every pass the app makes, and again when Nightdesk launches, when you switch to it, when you answer its notification prompt, and when you choose a row. So the menu can be a few seconds behind, and it says what it last saw rather than pretending to be live.
Banners
Section titled “Banners”Banners announce changes Nightdesk watched happen: an agent finished, failed, needs permission, or needs input.
Two consequences worth knowing:
- Opening Nightdesk over a fleet that is already parked is silent. Whatever is already true when Nightdesk starts is the starting point, not news.
- A state that simply continues never pings you again. You are told when something changes, not repeatedly reminded that it has not.
Every end of a turn announces finished. The harness also reports the end of a turn when a session is cleared, resumed or compacted, and the report does not say which it was — so you will occasionally get a “finished” for one of those. The end of a turn is exactly the come-and-look moment, which is why it is announced at all.
Permission to notify
Section titled “Permission to notify”Nightdesk asks for notification permission in context: the first time it has a banner actually worth posting, rather than at launch before it has anything to say.
If banners are held back while that prompt is still unanswered, they collapse — one per agent per kind, keeping the newest — so you do not get a pile of stale announcements when you answer.
If notifications are denied, or still undecided after Nightdesk asked, the status item’s menu grows a row that opens System Settings. Nightdesk reports the problem and points at the fix; it never asks a second time.