Watch your AI agents at work.

If all you need is your Mac awake while an agent runs, use caffeinate: caffeinate -i -w <pid> is one line and needs no install. Waterline answers a different question, which is whether your agents are still working, and you can read the answer from across the room.

No. The saver holds no power assertion: it's just a screen saver, and your Mac sleeps on its usual schedule. If you also run Ascenda Flow, choose Step Away from its menu bar icon before you leave. Flow keeps the Mac from sleeping while your work is still running, then lets it sleep once the work goes quiet. Your display may still turn off. If you only need the Mac awake, caffeinate -i in Terminal does that without installing anything.

No. The screen saver has no network code. It opens no network connections and only reads data already on your Mac: collector activity arrives over a local Unix socket, and Ascenda Flow, if you run it, shares its reading through a local file. There are no analytics, crash reports or update checks. The collectors are a separate install. What they record, and where it goes if you pair them with Ascenda Flow, is on /trust.

The collectors are; the screen saver isn't. The hooks that feed Waterline from Claude Code, Codex and Cursor are open source under the Apache 2.0 licence, on GitHub. Waterline itself is free under the MIT licence, but we distribute it as a signed binary and its source isn't public. The licence lets you use, copy and redistribute it. To check what it does on the network, a firewall such as LuLu or Little Snitch will show it opens no connections. The full licence is at /waterline/licence.

It shows still water and a clock. With no collectors and no Ascenda Flow, the water rests and doesn't pretend to track work. Ripples and pops only appear when something real happened: a tool failure, a context compaction or a session ending.

Claude Code, Codex and Cursor. Each needs its own collector, installed with one npx command listed on this page. Other agents aren’t supported yet.

We've not seen any noticeable drain. It's optimised for performance: the water is drawn with Metal, redraws only when the surface moves, and halves its frame rate when the water is calm. Like any screen saver, it only runs while the screen saver is showing.

It installs one copy in /Library/Screen Savers, which needs admin rights. A copy installed for one user won't stay selected on Sonoma or Tahoe: System Settings accepts the choice, then reverts to a stock screen saver.

Yes. The screen saver and its installer are signed with a Developer ID and notarized by Apple. The signing developer is Envisage Software Pty Ltd. Ascenda One Pty Ltd holds the copyright.

No. A screen saver has no background process to update from, so the version you install stays as it is. New releases are listed under Versions on this page, and the mailing list announces them.

Choose a different screen saver in System Settings, then delete Waterline.saver from /Library/Screen Savers. macOS asks for your password. Remove the collectors through the tool you installed them with.

Waterline is how we introduce Ascenda Flow, our app for engineers who work with AI agents. Waterline is complete without Flow and stays free. Flow adds colour: it tints the water by your workload. It also has Step Away mode, which keeps your Mac awake while your agents are still working and lets it sleep once they go quiet.