Perch

A native Mac workspace for your coding agents.
Agents on your server. A home on your Mac.

English · 简体中文

Perch brings coding agents into one macOS app: read conversations, review tools, respond to approvals, and keep track of what needs your attention. Your code and agents stay on the remote machine, connected over SSH.

Built with SwiftUI, AppKit and Ghostty, with native text, keyboard shortcuts and Liquid Glass controls on macOS 26. Designed for a focused, fluid reading experience.

Native macOS components with synthetic demo data; no live commands are shown.

Why Perch

• Native conversations. Streaming replies, Markdown, thinking and tool results, with details that expand when you need them.
• A workspace for your tasks. Group sessions, pin important work, archive finished conversations and return to your previous workspace.
• Know what needs you. See running tasks, pending questions and results waiting to be read.
• Keep your CLI workflow. Use native chat for supported agents and Ghostty terminals for CLI sessions through Herdr.
• Inspect the work. Open remote files and read Git diffs alongside a conversation (experimental).
• Remote execution, local control. Files and tools run on your server. Closing the Mac app leaves managed remote sessions running.

Agent connections

Native integrations share the same conversation UI. Additional RPC, SDK or ACP adapters are welcome; arbitrary protocol compatibility is not automatic. See Kimi setup and OMP / Qoder CN / dsh / Codex setup for tested versions and recovery limits. Agent credentials and model configuration stay with the CLI; Perch does not connect directly to model providers.

Local OMP discovery is available, but local native conversations are not connected yet. Kimi, remote OMP and Codex support steering during a running task, with an explicit next-turn option. Codex keeps its native thread ID and history, takes model and reasoning-effort choices from model/list, and surfaces every app-server approval or question for an explicit response. Qoder CN / dsh support stopping and next-turn queueing. Pending messages appear in the conversation until runtime history confirms them. Existing Herdr sessions remain terminal sessions.

Build and run

Requires macOS 14+ and a Swift toolchain with the macOS 26 SDK (Xcode 26 or newer). The current build has been tested on Apple Silicon. A remote SSH host and the corresponding agent runtime are required for remote sessions.

./scripts/build.sh
open build/Perch.app

Choose Connect a remote machine on the home screen, or Environment → +. The setup wizard verifies SSH, checks your chosen agent, offers installation and login actions, then lets you browse a remote directory and start your first task. Kimi's port and token-file path are editable in Advanced settings. Fresh installs start without a preset host. See the setup guide.

⌘N new conversation · ⌘K search · Return send · Shift Return new line

The interface follows the system language, with 简体中文 and English available under Settings → Language; the sidebar and its flows are bilingual first, other areas may still mix languages while translations catch up.

Status

Early source preview. Long-session responsiveness and recovery still need work; this is not a stable release. Remote file browsing and read-only Git diff are experimental. Support varies by agent; check the adapter documentation before relying on a workflow. Builds use local ad-hoc signing; notarized downloads are not available yet.

Contributing

Bug reports, focused fixes and agent adapters are welcome. Start with CONTRIBUTING.md. Please use synthetic conversations in reports and screenshots, and remove credentials and private paths.

License

MIT. Third-party components retain their own licenses; see THIRD_PARTY.md.