What is Heard?
Heard is a macOS voice layer designed to bring ambient intelligence to your terminal. It connects directly to coding agents like Claude Code, Codex, and Cursor, monitors their event streams, and transforms what matters into concise, natural spoken summaries. Instead of watching a terminal window or wading through raw logs, you get intelligent narration — full commentary when your eyes are elsewhere, silence until something errors or needs a decision, and project-level summaries when multiple agents run in parallel. Heard is open source and free for personal use.
Who it's for
- Solo developers who work with AI coding agents and want to stay in the flow without constantly staring at a terminal.
- Remote or on-the-go coders who need to step away from the desk — for a walk, a drive, or the kitchen — and still follow what their agents are doing.
- Team leads or multi-agent wranglers running several parallel sessions (e.g., Claude Code, Codex, Cursor) and need a single, coherent audio feed instead of five terminals talking over each other.
Key features
Listening modes
Heard offers three distinct modes switchable from the menu bar. Co-pilot provides short hooks and signposts while you work — enough to keep pace without narrating every keystroke. Companion delivers fuller briefings for times your eyes are off the screen. Focus stays quiet until something needs you: an approval, a blocker, a failure, or a decision waiting to be made.
Mobile pairing (Heard Power)
Pair your phone with a one-time scannable code, and live narration follows you anywhere — even with the screen locked. You can listen, approve, and reply to your agents by holding or tapping to talk. On-Mac speech recognition keeps developer vocabulary intact, and scoped pairing with automatic disarm ensures safety.
Multi-agent summarization
Heard follows parallel agent sessions simultaneously, voices the most important signal, and rolls the rest into compact background digests. Distinct voices make each agent recognizable by ear, so you hear where the work stands — not a chaotic stream of overlapping output.
Customisable voice personas
Choose from four built-in personas or write your own in a Markdown file. You can also pick the speaking voice, speed, and listening mode that match your temperament for the day.
What stands out
Heard turns agent activity into clear spoken updates, so you can step away without falling behind.
Most AI coding tools focus only on input — how you talk to the agent. Heard solves the neglected output side: it listens with judgment, filters noise, and delivers context-aware summaries that actually help you stay productive away from the screen. Its ability to handle multiple agents in parallel, pair with your phone, and auto-pause during calls makes it feel less like a notification system and more like a thoughtful co-worker.
Worth checking out if…
You use Claude Code, Codex, or Cursor and find yourself tied to the terminal waiting for agent output. Or if you run several AI coding sessions simultaneously and want a single, coherent audio feed instead of juggling terminal tabs. Heard is especially useful if you value stepping away from your desk without losing context — whether that means heading outside, checking in from your phone, or simply keeping your focus on the code while your ears stay informed.
