An Agent Status Light for Zed: Start With Native Notifications

Status Light is a $45 matte-black desk unit whose three domed positions are coloured red, amber and green from top to bottom. Zed can already issue a desktop notification and optional sound when an agent generation finishes. The product's power, connection and control protocol are unconfirmed, and Zed's documented notification settings do not establish an arbitrary lamp command.

What agent states in Zed are worth a light?

Use one narrow state first: an agent generation wrapped up and may deserve attention. That does not mean tests passed, the working tree is clean, an edit is correct or a whole task is finished. Tool permission requests are also different from completed generation.

Keep Zed's thread, diff and permission card authoritative. A lamp may invite a look, never summarize a decision.

How do you trigger a desk light without an official Zed hook?

Do not scrape pixels, UI text or private thread contents. Current task hooks are documented for worktree creation, not general agent completion. First confirm whether the real light publishes a supported local interface. Without one, there is no honest integration plan.

A software-only mock can test whether a second alert helps. Any later adapter needs bounded inputs, error logs, no credentials in arguments and an off command.

Should amber mean waiting for review or still running?

Amber can mean “notification received, inspect Zed” if the source is reliable. It should not mean both waiting and running. Red and green require independent evidence for failure and success, which a generation-complete notification does not provide.

Add an expiry and an unknown state. A signal from a closed project or old thread must not survive into new work.

Is a light useful with Zed full-screen on one monitor?

Probably not while the Agent Panel remains visible. Zed's native visual notification, optional sound and Threads Sidebar already retain richer context. A separate lamp may help from across a room or through peripheral vision, but can also distract coworkers or conflict with accessibility needs.

Measure notices missed before adding hardware. Simulate concurrent threads, adapter failure, restart and a queued stale event. Clear the signal when review starts, not when work is assumed correct. Log only event type and time. If native notifications solve the problem, stop there.

The Status Light is a hardware shell awaiting interface verification. Its three colours should never outrank the actual Zed thread or diff. Check whether desktop notifications are suppressed by focus modes or operating-system settings before blaming Zed. A lamp adapter would add another delivery chain with its own suppression and retry behavior. Never retry indefinitely, because an old completion event can look current. Prefer a short local event identifier over thread content, and make a manual lamp test visibly different from live state.