Claude was still working.
Your Mac didn't care.

Why your Mac sleeps while Claude Desktop is still going

Claude Desktop does almost none of its work on your Mac. While it streams a long response, runs MCP tools, or grinds through a research task, the heavy lifting happens on Anthropic's servers — your Mac's CPU sits near zero. That isn't even what decides it: macOS goes by your idle time, how long since real keyboard or mouse input, plus the power assertions running processes hold. Nothing about a Claude window being deep into a run registers at all. When your sleep timer runs out, macOS suspends the Mac, and Claude is frozen mid-response until you wake it back up.

It stings more with Claude Desktop than with a terminal agent, because Claude lives in a window: there's no terminal session to park a keep-awake command in, and the runs got long — multi-step tool use and research tasks can go far past any screen-sleep timer. The fix is to hold sleep off only while Claude is actually working, then let your Mac sleep normally shortly after it goes quiet — within your grace window, 90 seconds by default. You can do that for free in two minutes, or with a tool that knows the difference between "Claude responding" and "Claude window just open."

If you only run long Claude tasks occasionally, you don't need to buy anything. Two solid free options:

• The built-in caffeinate command. Open Terminal and run caffeinate -i before you kick off a long Claude run. It'll hold sleep off until you close the Terminal window or press Ctrl+C. Simple, free, already on your Mac.
• Amphetamine (free, Mac App Store). Gives you a menu-bar toggle and basic process triggers, so you can set it to stay awake while the Claude app is running.

Both are a fine choice for occasional use. The catch is specific to a chat app: Claude's window is often open all day, so an "awake while Claude is running" trigger means awake all day — and caffeinate doesn't know when the response actually finished. Either you remember to turn it off, or your Mac stays up (and your battery drains) long after Claude went quiet.

How does it know Claude is working and not just open?

For a windowed app like Claude Desktop, AgentBarista checks the on-screen status — Claude shows a "Stop response" state while it's generating — through macOS's Accessibility API, which needs a one-time permission from you. Without that permission it still sees Claude is running, but deliberately treats it as idle: a merely-open chat window shouldn't keep your Mac awake.

Isn't caffeinate or Amphetamine enough?

For occasional use, honestly, yes — they're good tools and they're free. Where AgentBarista earns its price: it knows when Claude actually finished (instead of staying awake as long as the window is open), it won't drain your battery overnight, and it shows you what it actually kept awake.

Does it read my Claude conversations?

It looks for a handful of status phrases in Claude's window — a working-or-idle check. AgentBarista never opens your files. To tell a working agent from a finished one it looks at process command lines and CPU, at the names and modification times of your agents' session files, and — only if you grant macOS Accessibility permission — at the on-screen text of the agent apps you enable and of the terminals we support. Two of those can contain your own words: a command line includes any prompt you pass on it, and on-screen text includes whatever is visible in that window, your code included. Both are matched against status phrases on your Mac and discarded on the spot: never stored, never sent. Nothing about your work leaves your Mac — no file contents, no code, no prompts, no file names, no activity data. Your stats and settings stay on this Mac. The app contains no analytics or telemetry of any kind. Its network calls are two: license validation, sent to our payment provider, Lemon Squeezy — activating a license sends your license key and your Mac’s name, and the routine check after that sends your license key and an anonymous instance id, nothing else — and an update check that fetches the new-version list from agentbarista.com, sends no personal data, and can be turned off in Settings.

What does it cost?

AgentBarista Personal License is $19/year if you subscribe before September 15 — locked in for as long as you stay subscribed. New subscribers after that pay $29/year. It auto-renews annually until you cancel — cancel any time. A 5-Mac Pack is $129/year, flat. The download is a free 14-day trial of the full app — no card needed — and there is a 30-day money-back guarantee — one email, full refund.