Show HN: Adrafinil – keep a lid-closed Mac awake only while agents work

https://github.com/kageroumado/adrafinil

34•kageroumado•1h ago

A month ago there was a wave of posts and tweets about engineers walking around cafes and parks with their MacBooks propped half-open, as fully closing the lid forces sleep that stops their AI agents. Some people made snarky comments about using tmux or Amphetamine, and some defended their choice with “but I only need it sometimes, and forgetting to disable Amphetamine and finding my laptop discharged in my bag is worse.”

This is a solution to this problem. Unlike caffeinate, it will prevent your MacBook from sleeping even with the lid closed, with no external power or display, using pmset disablesleep 1. Unlike other sleep-preventing apps, Adrafinil only activates when there’s an agent actively doing something. It detects agent activity through hooks it installs into Claude Code, Codex, and others. To reassure you it’s working, the app shows the active status in the menu bar, and it plays a chime when you close the lid.

Once the agent is done, Adrafinil detects it and lets the laptop go to sleep by setting pmset disablesleep back to 0. It will also let it sleep in case of overheating. And if you want to manually toggle it, you can install an optional MCP and tell your agent to keep the MacBook awake for a specific time.

It has four binaries, one of which is a root helper exposing a single setSleepBlocked call. All the logic and policy live in the unprivileged parts. They’re all notarized, and the app is fully open source (MIT).

Comments

processunknown•1h ago

Does it also make my Mac irritable?

kageroumado•47m ago

Probably less irritable than amphetamine~

moralestapia•1h ago

What's old is new again, but I welcome this.

I used to do this 15 years ago to keep listening to music from my laptop (one of the white chiclet ones) in my backpack, can't remember the name of the app I used then.

One caveat, your laptop cannot cool inside a backpack, it will overheat and shut down anyway. This happened to me several times.

dominotw•1h ago

had a coworkers whose laptop keys melted into mush

dmd•1h ago

that was true of intel but definitely not of arm macbooks.

NewJazz•57m ago

Then why do they have fans?

kageroumado•49m ago

It has a setting for thermal cutoff that you can set to something like 60º C. Sleeping will stop heavy work (like a build) before it leads to overheating.

xlii•58m ago

Um so it is

    sudo bash -c 'touch KEEP_RUNNING; pmset -b sleep 0; pmset -b disablesleep 1; while [ -e KEEP_RUNNING ]; do sleep 1; done; pmset -b sleep 5; pmset -b disablesleep 0'

and

    Agent, when you're done do `rm KEEP_RUNNING`, kthxbye.

(personally I have Ruby scripts that check activity on "tmux capture-output" for that)

fragmede•36m ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

da_grift_shift•25m ago

Yeah, I'll stick with the oneliner.

https://ghloc.vercel.app/kageroumado/adrafinil?branch=main

operatingthetan•55m ago

So now we're naming apps after obscure Modafinil derivatives?

chopete3•53m ago

This is great. Will check it.

Recently I bought a usb-c empty external monitor card to prevent mac from going to sleep. There are many of these external monitor simulators on Amazon.

I still see the laptop go to sleep many times with the external monitor simulator.

This is the one I bought.

4K 60Hz USB-C Type-C Virtual Display Adapter DDC EDID Dummy Plug Headless Ghost Display Emulator 2K 60hz1080P@120Hz

bluedino•36m ago

Can't you just use a hot corner configured as "prevent sleep"?

fragmede•35m ago

How does it sleep when the agent is done working with the hot corner?

doubled112•28m ago

Have the agent write an app that moves the cursor our of the hot corner and trigger it when done.

kageroumado•14m ago

The dummy display enables “clamshell mode,” which lets your MacBook stay awake even with the lid closed, provided that it’s also on AC power. If the MacBook is not connected to power, the clamshell mode isn’t activated and it will sleep normally.

Adrafinil simply disables the global sleep without spoofing hardware, and re-enables it once the agent is done working, the temperature is too high, or the battery is low.

dawnerd•51m ago

But Amphetamine has an option to end when an app closes. I’m just so confused why everyone using ai is reinventing solutions that already exist.

conception•43m ago

Easier to ask Claude than ask google I guess.

kageroumado•43m ago

Claude Code or Codex (normally) don’t close the terminal window after a turn ends, they wait for the user’s reply.

flexagoon•27m ago

Everyone dreams about making the next cool AI tool and doesn't bother checking if someone has already made the same thing years ago without the word "AI" in the description

neoecos•20m ago

I think the same...It happend to me that I just ask Claude to build whatever I need for my personal very specific use case without looking what else it's outhere

cyclopeanutopia•47m ago

Ridiculous bloat.

WUMBOWUMBO•45m ago

reminds me of ye old caffeinate

kageroumado•28m ago

Caffeinate doesn’t prevent sleep with the lid closed.

aqme28•33m ago

Thank goodness. I can’t leave my laptop for a second unattended because my cat loves nothing more than to dance on the keyboard. I’ve need something like this.

rancar2•32m ago

For MacOS, keep awake with:

sudo pmset -a disablesleep 1

Reset back:

sudo pmset -a disablesleep 0

kageroumado•25m ago

This is exactly what the app does, except it ties it to agent activity and re-enables sleep once the turn ends, the laptop is close to overheating, the battery is low, or on a timer.

xbar•22m ago

Nice. I needed this yesterday, and will need it again today.

cyanydeez•15m ago

you can run opencode inside a docker container and expose it's webui.

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