Running Codex CLI in the Background? Put a Traffic Light on It
The Status Light is a three-lens desk lamp, red, amber, green, stacked like a traffic signal, that you wire up to show whether a long Codex CLI run is still going, waiting on you, or finished. Codex CLI tasks can run for minutes while it works through a plan, and the light exists so you stop breaking your concentration every ninety seconds to check the terminal.
Does the Status Light know what Codex CLI is doing on its own?
No, and this is the thing to understand before buying it. The Status Light ships as hardware plus the manufacturer's utility; it has three independently addressable lamps, but nothing pre-wires them to any particular agent's state. You supply the glue, typically a start hook that lights red when Codex CLI begins a task and a stop hook that switches to green when it finishes, with amber free for whatever waiting on you means in your setup.
What does that glue actually look like?
A few lines around whatever triggers you already have: the moment you send Codex CLI a prompt, and the moment it returns control to you either because it finished or because it's asking a question mid-run. Red while it's running, amber if it stops to ask you something, green when it's done and waiting for review, that's the common mapping, but nothing forces it. Some people put green on started and use red for needs a decision, which works just as well as long as you're consistent with yourself.
Why not just glance at the terminal?
Because glancing is the expensive part. If a task takes several minutes, you switch to something else, and then either you check back every couple of minutes out of habit, interrupting whatever you switched to, or you forget entirely and lose the minutes between completion and when you finally look. A light sitting in your peripheral vision changes state without your having to look at it, which removes the reason to interrupt yourself in the first place.
Wired or the Bluetooth version?
Wired. The USB-C version runs off the port with no battery to manage, and it's the one we recommend. A rechargeable Bluetooth variant exists, but it carries a lithium cell, which restricts how it can be shipped by air and adds a battery you have to remember to charge for a device that's supposed to sit on your desk permanently anyway.
Who shouldn't buy this yet?
Anyone expecting it to recognize Codex CLI out of the box. This is genuinely hardware plus a utility, not a finished integration, and setting up the hook is a real step, not a formality. If writing that glue isn't something you want to do this week, wait for a later revision rather than buying it and being disappointed by a light that never changes color. For the same idea done as a screen instead of a lamp, see the Desk Terminal guide, and for other Codex CLI desk setups browse the Codex CLI tag.