CoIsland’s island is Codenotch’s. The small black island on the edge of the screen, its rings, its hover cards and the way it unfolds all come from Codenotch, the open-source app by Vinz, copied under the MIT license and then changed for CoIsland’s job. Thank you, Vinz. The two apps share a look and do different jobs: Codenotch shows how much of your AI coding tools’ usage limits you have spent, and CoIsland watches your work stack and hands what needs you to an agent.
What CoIsland took from Codenotch
- The island itself. A small pill on a screen edge that unfolds under the pointer, the rings, the hover cards, the motion, and placement on any of the four edges.
- Under its license. The code was copied at commit
784985eunder the MIT license, © 2026 Vinz. That license stays in the folder the code lives in, and a notice lists the changes CoIsland made to it. - Then changed for alerts. Each ring became a monitor drawn with its tool’s logo. A card lists a monitor’s new items and ends with the agents you can hand them to, and an agent’s card grows beside the ring while it works.
What Codenotch does well
- Every usage limit, one ring each. Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, GitHub Copilot, Antigravity, Grok, OpenCode, Kimi, Kiro, Amp, local models in Ollama and LM Studio, and more. Hover a ring for its limit windows and when they reset.
- Is it still working? A thin arc spins in a tool’s ring while a session is busy, and turns into a pulsing amber ring when one waits on you. When an agent stops or asks something, the notch opens for five seconds and plays a sound, and a click brings its app to the front.
- Alerts before you hit the wall. A limit crossing 80%, and reaching 100%, becomes a system notification.
- Beyond the Mac. A Windows port with the same design, and a phone app for iOS and Android that shows the same rings over your Wi-Fi.
- Free and open. MIT-licensed, signed, notarized, and it updates itself.
How CoIsland uses the same island
CoIsland points the island at the tools you work with, through more than 35 connectors: GitHub, Vercel, Sentry, PagerDuty, Jira, Linear, Snowflake, PostgreSQL, your mail and calendar, and more.
- A ring is a monitor. Each monitor asks one question, such as failed runs on
mainor a new Sentry issue, on your schedule, and its ring says how things stand. - An alert opens the island. When a monitor finds something new, the island opens with a sound and lists it, and a click opens the alert with everything that fired it.
- An agent takes it from there. Pick Claude Code, Codex or Cortex Code on the card and the agent starts with the whole alert, in a card beside the ring. You answer its questions there and keep Acknowledge and Resolve for yourself. See agents.
- Your own sessions, counted. An Agents ring lists your latest Claude Code, Codex and Cortex Code sessions on this Mac, with their project and, for Claude Code and Codex, their tokens.
Where CoIsland is weaker
- Only 2 monitors free, and not open source. Codenotch is free and open source.
- No usage limits. CoIsland counts the tokens of Claude Code and Codex conversations; it shows no plan limits and no reset times.
- Three agents. Claude Code, Codex and Cortex Code. Codenotch reads the usage of many more tools.
- Mac only. Apple Silicon on macOS 14 or later: no Windows, no phone app.
Codenotch vs CoIsland
| Codenotch | CoIsland | |
|---|---|---|
| Its job | How much of each AI tool’s usage limit you have spent, and which sessions wait on you | What needs you in your work stack, handed to an agent |
| A ring is | An AI tool | A monitor, in its tool’s colour |
| Reads from | Coding assistants and local model runtimes | 35+ connectors: code, deploys, issues, on-call, data, mail, calendar |
| Your AI sessions | Busy or waiting, per tool; brings their app to the front | Recent sessions with their project, and tokens for Claude Code and Codex; an agent started on an alert works in a card |
| Alerts | A usage limit at 80% and 100% | A monitor’s new items, or a count past a threshold |
| Platforms | Mac, Windows, and a phone app | Mac (Apple Silicon, macOS 14 or later) |
| Price | Free | 2 monitors free with CoIsland Community; Lifetime once from $29; 2 Macs; every update |
| Source | Open, MIT | Closed; the Codenotch files in it keep their MIT license |
Use both
They do not compete for your attention: Codenotch tells you when your AI tools are about to run out, CoIsland when your stack needs you. Put each one on its own screen edge, and let CoIsland hand its next alert to the same Claude Code whose limits Codenotch is watching.
For the other agent app in the notch, see CoIsland vs Vibe Island, and every comparison in one place.