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tbreschi
Hey HN I'm Terrence and I built Javalamp, a terminal "lava lamp" screensaver that keeps your mac awake while your agents/tools are running.

I built it because I kept having longer running coding/AI jobs pause when my Mac went to sleep, and I wanted something lightweight and fun that lived in the terminal.

I’m curious whether others have this problem too and what features would make this actually useful (metrics, different visualizations, non-Mac support, etc.).

Feedback on both the idea and the implementation is very welcome.

Thanks!

gus_massa
Do you ha ve some screenshots or better a short video?

Does the lava lamp stops when the AI job stops? So...

1) ... I can see it and look at the result

2) ... the computer get's bored and go to sleep and save electricity

tbreschi
1.. I’d have to think through about how to wire it up to listen to the other terminal where the job is running, but yeah I suppose this could work.

2. Yeah this is a smart feature would be cool.

Thanks for the feedback!

mockbolt
does it survive screen lock or just suppress the screensaver?
usernametaken29
I didn’t know caffeinate exists. It’s insane this is a use case that needs a fix but sometimes you just want something to keep running and on Mac that’s fucking difficult
timzaak
Can the animation be simpler? For example, just a dot moving from left to right and from top to bottom across the screen?