Aside: An observer for agents that doesn't interfere with the code

Parallel coding agents—Codex, Claude Code, and Pi—are already a reality for many teams. The problem isn’t that they don’t get the job done, but that you lose context: three threads are running simultaneously, each waiting for your decision, and switching between them takes time. Aside solves exactly this problem—and does so in a surprisingly radical way: it doesn’t manage the agents at all.

Aside is a native macOS utility that lives in the menu bar and reads local transcripts from already-running Codex, Claude Code, and Pi sessions. You select a thread and ask a specific model: what has changed, why the agent chose this path, and what it needs next. The response comes in a parallel “side chat” tied to a specific session. The agent receives nothing—it doesn’t even know you asked the question.

This is a key trade-off worth mentioning explicitly. Most tools in the agent space aim to act as orchestrators: launching, steering, and merging context. Aside consciously refrains from doing this. It doesn’t send messages to the agent, doesn’t edit the project, and doesn’t execute commands. It only reads and explains. The “read-only” limitation here isn’t a marketing slogan, but an architectural decision—and it comes at a cost: you can’t use Aside to give an agent a command or adjust its course.

In return, you get two things that orchestrators typically don’t provide. First, you can search session content—not by titles, but by prompts, responses, file paths, and errors. The index is stored locally, and the Codex and Claude Code subagents sync with the parent task using their own transcripts. Second, Aside tries to answer the question “what needs my attention right now” by bringing direct input requests and likely questions to the top, with Mac notifications for locked sessions.

Privacy is carefully designed. The local index and side-chat history never leave the machine. When choosing the cloud model, Aside sends only the context of a specific session after anonymizing credentials. Codex and Claude Code OAuth tokens are not read, and API keys from the shell are not imported—Aside delegates responses to the vendors themselves via already-connected accounts. For complete local operation, you can connect Ollama.

The tool is open-source under the MIT license, compiled from source code, and updates are signed and downloaded within the application. Intel Mac support is currently in preview.

The main question isn’t whether it’s convenient—it is. The question is whether the context from the transcript will be enough for the observer model to provide useful answers, rather than just repeating what you can already see. If Aside can explain the agent’s decisions more accurately than you can figure out from the log yourself, it will solidify its niche. If not, it will remain a handy search tool for session history.

Source: Hacker News - Newest: ""AI" "LLM""