I gave my AI coding agents an office, and now my team can watch them work

Description and use

Deskmates visualizes AI coding agents in real time, showing their statuses and interactions in a pixel‑art office, enhancing transparency and team collaboration.

Problem

Team members could not see what AI coding agents were doing in real time, making it hard to understand agent states and permissions.

Outcome

Deskmates provides a real‑time, privacy‑preserving visual representation of AI coding agents, improving team awareness and collaboration.

Workflow

• Install deskmates globally via npm
• Run deskmates serve to launch the office UI
• Connect agents using deskmates connect or by default for Codex/Copilot/Cursor/Gemini
• Agents emit events via hooks, session files, or HTTP ingest API
• Deskmates reducer processes events to determine agent state
• WebSocket streams state to the canvas UI
• Agents appear as characters walking, typing, waiting, or leaving
• Optional: serve over LAN with token, use kiosk mode for TV display
• Optional: set up shared office with --shared and --relay for multi‑PC visibility

Evidence

I spend most of my day with three or four AI coding agents running at once: Claude Code in two profiles, Codex in another terminal, sometimes a subagent or two.

Source

deskmates is a pixel‑art office where every agent session on your machine is a character at a desk.

Source

It is open source (MIT), and it installs with one command: npm install -g deskmates deskmates serve # http://127.0.0.1:47821 deskmates demo # simulated agents, if you want to see it before connecting anything

Source

Privacy was the first rule, not the last. Events carry only a tool name and a detail of at most 120 characters: a file name or the first line of a command.

Source

Next to my keyboard was not where I wanted it. I wanted it on a tablet, and then on the screen in the office.

Source