BackgrindStop babysitting your agents
“The work keeps moving whether you're watching or not.”
One overlay for every agent · macOS & Windows
Grind with every agent,
on top of everything.
Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, or our hosted Grindy — floating over whatever you're in, pinging you only when an agent actually needs you.
15,843+ developers grinding ★★★★★ 
Glance mode in action
Hide the window. Keep the control.
Fade the overlay out and get back to reading, browsing, or gaming. When an agent needs a yes/no — or has a question — a small card slides in, you tap it, and everything keeps grinding.
Policy engine · new
Approve once. Teach it forever.
Every 'Always allow' becomes a rule — scoped to the repo and command, with a hit counter and a full audit trail. The overlay interrupts you less every single day, and never silently widens what it may do.
Rules, not a firehose. Allow `pnpm test` in one repo, deny `rm -rf` everywhere. Deny always wins over allow.
A visible audit trail. Every auto-decision is logged — what ran, where, and which rule let it through. Trust, but verifiable.
Starts on day one. Onboarding offers safe starter rules — tests and dependency installs — so the quiet life begins immediately.
Ways to drive it
Bring your own agent.
Or use ours.
No lock-in. Switch backends per workspace whenever you like.
Claude Code
Your own claude CLI, wrapped — same login, same history, same hooks.
Cursor
Your own cursor-agent CLI, right in the overlay.
Grindy
Our hosted model, nothing to install — a full coding agent powered by OpenCode.
Codex Coming soon
Your own Codex CLI, wrapped the same way.
No agent? Use ours
Meet Grindy — the agent with nothing to set up.
No CLI to install. No API keys to paste. No config files to babysit. Sign in, open a folder, and start describing — Grindy is a full coding agent that lives right inside the overlay.
- Nothing to install. No Homebrew, no npm, no PATH surgery — it's already in the app.
- No separate AI account. No keys to generate, no second bill to wire up.
- Pay only for what you use. Metered to the cent, top up whenever — no per-task subscription to think about.
- Up to a 1M-token context window. Grindy keeps a huge slice of your codebase in working memory, so it stays on track through long, sprawling tasks.
- Build or Plan, per task. Flip to Plan when you want it to think first, Build when you just want it shipped.
What it does
Built to never break your flow.
Always on top of anything
Floats over your editor, a browser, docs — or a borderless-fullscreen game. One hotkey to summon it, one to make it vanish.
Click-through glance mode
Tap a key and the window goes transparent — your clicks and keystrokes pass straight through to whatever is underneath. Hover to bring it back.
It only nags when it matters
The window flashes and chimes when your agent needs a yes/no, hits a question, or finishes. Otherwise it stays out of your way.
A real mini-IDE
A file tree, syntax-highlighted previews, rendered Markdown, and file:line links you can click straight to the spot.
Several agents at once
Run a few agents side by side, each pinned to its own folder — multi-root, like VS Code — each on whatever backend you pick.
Your secrets stay home
A .grindignore file marks what never leaves your machine — your .env, your keys, the things you don’t want on a wire.
One overlay. Every agent.
Stop app-switching between three coding agents.
Anthropic's Remote Control watches Claude, Codex cloud watches OpenAI, Google's Jules watches Gemini — three apps, three silos, three logins. Backgrind goes the other way: one desktop overlay where every agent's stream, approvals, and “done” pings land as ambient toasts, right next to the local ones.
Every agent, one surface. Claude Code, Cursor, and hosted Grindy run side by side in tabs — and the daemon now watches the labs' cloud agents too (Jules, Codex cloud · beta), surfacing their "needs you" and "done" moments as the same toasts.
One approve, wherever it fires. A held PreToolUse hook becomes a toast you tap from the overlay, the chat, a hotkey, or your phone. No hunting across Remote Control, Codex cloud, and Jules for which agent is blocked on a yes/no.
No per-lab invoice. Each lab rents you a separate remote for its own agent. Backgrind is a single window over the CLIs you already pay for — watching more agents doesn't mean wiring up another subscription.
Run a whole team — each agent in its own tab, one glance across all of them.
New · built for running a crowd
Ten agents. One screen. Zero chaos.
The moment you stop running one agent and start running a team, every other tool falls apart. Backgrind is designed for exactly that moment.
Fleet — mission control. One hotkey opens a live grid of every agent — local tabs and cloud runs — grouped by repo and filterable by “needs you”. Approve or deny straight from the card, jump into any session with a click.
Agents that know about each other. Point three agents at one repo without fear. Each one is told who else is working in the folder and coordinates defensively — small focused edits, re-reads before writing, no repo-wide refactors, no destructive git commands.
Eco mode. Flip one switch and agents answer in a few words — no preamble, no recaps, no code comments — while doing exactly the same work. That trims roughly half the output tokens, and a live meter counts what you saved.
Live mode · free to try · included with Plus
Command your agents from anywhere.
Step away from your desk and your agents keep grinding. Live mode mirrors your Backgrind desktop to your phone or iPad — watch the terminal stream in real time, send commands, and answer “needs you” prompts, even when you're nowhere near your machine. Pairing starts on your desktop and the link is end-to-end encrypted, so your code never sits readable on our relay.
Drive, don't just watch. Type to your agents, switch sessions, and approve actions from your pocket — not a read-only mirror.
End-to-end encrypted. A per-pairing key (scan a QR or paste it) means the relay only ever sees ciphertext — your code stays yours.
No new login. Pairing is desktop-initiated with a one-time code — no web account to set up, nothing extra to trust.
Vibe code mode
Vibe coding isn't a beginner thing.
Describe what you want instead of reading every line — vibe mode hides the source and runs hands-off. That's a way of working, not a skill tier: a first-timer and a staff engineer both vibe code. Backgrind just dials how much it explains versus how much it quietly handles.
Results, not source. File tree, search, and code preview hidden — you describe what you want, the agent ships it.
Hands-off by default. New sessions auto-accept edits so it just works — only your dotfiles (.env) stay protected.
Full dev view, one toggle. Flip vibe mode off any time for the file tree, real diffs, and the raw terminal.
Ships their first real thing.
Describe it in plain words and watch it appear. Grindy explains what it's doing, keeps the intimidating parts out of sight, and never runs a risky command without asking first.
Offloads the boring 80%.
Hand off the boilerplate, the glue, the migrations — the stuff you can already do but would rather not. The interesting 20% gets your attention while the agent grinds the rest.
Delegation, not training wheels.
Run three agents across three repos at once, skim the diffs, ship. Drop to the full developer view — file tree, raw diffs, real terminal — the second you want the controls back.
One setting — your coding level — tunes how much it explains. Everything else is the same app.
Local-first, by design
Your code stays on your machine.
Codex and Jules clone your repo into a cloud VM you don't own and run it there. Backgrind runs the real agent on your workstation, on top of it, where you can see every command before it happens.
Runs on your machine
The overlay is a thin client — it renders your CLI and forwards input. It never stores or transmits your conversation history.
Your agent never hits our server
In bring-your-own-CLI mode, agent content stays between you and your provider. We are not in the loop, so there is nothing for us to see.
No memory reading, no injection
A plain always-on-top window — the same category as Discord or OBS. No game memory reading, no input automation, no anti-cheat hooks.
Secrets stay off the wire
A .grindignore file marks what never leaves the machine — your .env, your keys — even when you use the hosted Grindy model.
Builds & releases on GitHub Signed releases · verify every version
Loved by builders
Developers who'd rather build than babysit.
★★★★★
I fire off a refactor in Claude Code and it just floats over my editor. The ping when it actually needs me means I stopped alt-tabbing every two minutes.
Sofia MarchettiSenior Frontend Engineer ★★★★★
Live mode is unreal — I kick off a task at my desk and approve the diffs from my phone on the couch. My agent doesn't sit idle waiting for me to come back.
Lukas BrandtIndie hacker, building solo ★★★★★
I run four agents in parallel over a borderless game. Backgrind is the only thing that keeps all of them visible without a wall of terminals to babysit.
Marcus ReidStaff Engineer ★★★★★
Grindy meant zero key juggling. One click and I had a hosted agent running in the overlay — no provider setup, nothing to wire up, nothing to babysit.
Kenji WatanabeBackend Engineer ★★★★★
It's just my own CLI, but I finally stopped babysitting the terminal. The ambient notifications are the feature I didn't know I'd been missing for years.
Daniel OkaforFull-stack developer Straight answers
The questions everyone asks.
Which agents does it work with?
Bring your own CLI — Claude Code or Cursor (same login, same history, same hooks) — or use Grindy, our hosted model with nothing to install. Switch backends per workspace whenever you like.
What is vibe code mode?
Describe what you want, don't read source. Vibe mode hides the file tree and code preview, runs new sessions hands-off (edits auto-accepted), and keeps your dotfiles (.env) protected. Tell it your level — basic, medium, or pro — and the agent adjusts how much it explains. Turn it off any time for the full developer view.
Do I need a subscription?
Not to try it. The free in-app demo runs the overlay with your own CLI, and signing in unlocks a one-time 7-day Plus trial — Live mode included. After that, Plus ($9/mo or $90/yr) is the full local app: Live mode, saved projects, workspaces, and voice. Pro ($29/mo or $290/yr) adds Grindy — our hosted grindy-1 and grindy-1-pro models (no API key needed), built on the OpenCode agent — plus unlimited parallel agents and cloud sync.
Is my code private?
In bring-your-own-CLI mode, agent content never touches our servers. With Grindy, prompts go to our hosted model — and a .grindignore file keeps secrets off the wire.
Do you collect or train on my code?
No. With your own CLI the agent runs entirely on your machine and its content never reaches us — there is nothing for us to collect. With the hosted Grindy model, prompts are sent only to answer them and are never used for training, and a .grindignore file keeps the files you choose (your .env, your keys) off the wire entirely.
Does it really run over a fullscreen game?
Yes — over any game in borderless / windowed-fullscreen mode (exclusive fullscreen hides every overlay at the OS level). It's a normal always-on-top window, the same category as the Discord or OBS overlay: no game memory reading, no input injection, no anti-cheat hooks. The game just runs underneath.
Which operating systems?
macOS and Windows.
How do I know it is not phoning home?
The overlay is a thin client: it renders your CLI and forwards your input — it does not store or transmit your conversation history. Signed builds are distributed as GitHub Releases, so you can always verify the exact version you are running.
Download
Get Backgrind for your machine.
Your OS macOS macOS 11 Big Sur or later
Apple Silicon & Intel Download for macOS Your OS Windows Windows 10 & 11 · 64-bit Download for Windows
Apple Silicon & Intel Download for macOS Your OS Windows Windows 10 & 11 · 64-bit Download for Windows
Linux .deb & AppImage Coming soon
Signed builds, distributed via GitHub Releases — verify every version you run.
Pricing
Start free. Upgrade when it pays for itself.
Launch offer — 50% off for new users
Save up to 20% paying yearly
Most popular
Free $0 Free trial
Plus $18 $9 /mo billed monthly $15 $7.50 /mo billed yearly · $90 · save 17%
Pro $58 $29 /mo billed monthly $48 $24.17 /mo billed yearly · $290 · save 17%
Always-on-top overlay
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Bring your own CLI — Claude Code, Cursor
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Glance mode · hotkeys · click-through
✓
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.grindignore secrets guard
✓
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Live mode — drive your agents from any browser
Trial
✓
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Saved projects & settings
Session-only
✓
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Parallel agents
1
3
Unlimited
Workspaces & multi-agent tabs
—
✓
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Voice input — on-device Whisper
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Hosted Grindy models — no API key needed
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grindy-1 · grindy-1-pro
Cloud sync across devices
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Priority support & early features
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Free $0 Free trial
- ✓ Always-on-top overlay
- ✓ Bring your own CLI — Claude Code, Cursor
- ✓ Glance mode · hotkeys · click-through
- ✓ .grindignore secrets guard
- ✓ Live mode — drive your agents from any browser — Trial
- ✓ Saved projects & settings — Session-only
- ✓ Parallel agents — 1
Plus $18 $9 /mo billed monthly $15 $7.50 /mo billed yearly · $90 · save 17%
- ✓ Always-on-top overlay
- ✓ Bring your own CLI — Claude Code, Cursor
- ✓ Glance mode · hotkeys · click-through
- ✓ .grindignore secrets guard
- ✓ Live mode — drive your agents from any browser
- ✓ Saved projects & settings
- ✓ Parallel agents — 3
- ✓ Workspaces & multi-agent tabs
- ✓ Voice input — on-device Whisper
Most popular
Pro $58 $29 /mo billed monthly $48 $24.17 /mo billed yearly · $290 · save 17%
- ✓ Always-on-top overlay
- ✓ Bring your own CLI — Claude Code, Cursor
- ✓ Glance mode · hotkeys · click-through
- ✓ .grindignore secrets guard
- ✓ Live mode — drive your agents from any browser
- ✓ Saved projects & settings
- ✓ Parallel agents — Unlimited
- ✓ Workspaces & multi-agent tabs
- ✓ Voice input — on-device Whisper
- ✓ Hosted Grindy models — no API key needed — grindy-1 · grindy-1-pro
- ✓ Cloud sync across devices
- ✓ Priority support & early features
Billed securely by Lemon Squeezy · cancel anytime.
Support
Need a hand? Just email us.
hello@backgrind.comWe read every message and usually reply within a day.
From the blog
Read up before you grind.
Claude Code
Compare the agents
The overlay flow
Free tools: which-agent quiz, what does your agent cost? (calculator), does your game allow overlays? (anti-cheat checker), Claude Code notification builder
Code while you game: all setups, WoW, OSRS, Elden Ring, GTA 6 — see how it works, or will it get you banned?
Let the agents grind.
Fire off a task and get back to your day — it taps you the moment it needs you.
Try for free