A status line that lives in your laptop

That SD card slot on your MacBook Pro? 99% of people never touch it. SidePulse Pro fits there — flush, hidden, ready. A string of 8 RGB LEDs that shows you what's happening without opening anything.

Your coding agent is thinking. A build just went green. The deploy failed. The battery is low while the lid is closed. Pick a color, pick an animation, and SidePulse Pro shows it.

It's just a file

SidePulse Pro exposes itself to your Mac as a filesystem. No driver to install, no app to run, no SDK to learn. To change the lights, you write to LEDS.TXT:

echo "#30d158 800ms pulse" > /Volumes/SidePulse/LEDS.TXT

If a tool can write a text file, it can control the lights. That means shell scripts, coding agents, CI hooks, cron jobs, and one-liners all work out of the box.

A simple but mighty animation language

LEDS.TXT uses a small, CSS-inspired language. Colors, timing, easing, brightness, per-LED addressing, and loops — in plain text.

# soft breathing pulse
#404040 1.4s pulse
off 400ms none
repeat

# stagger all 8 LEDs like a wave
0:#ff0000 150ms ease 0ms;   1:#ff8000 150ms ease 50ms
2:#ffff00 150ms ease 100ms; 3:#00ff00 150ms ease 150ms

# only LED 3 changes, the rest hold
3:#ffffff 80ms none

You get linear, ease, ease-in, ease-out, ease-in-out, cosine, and a full-cycle pulse. Address all LEDs at once, by position, or by index. Loop forever or a fixed number of times.

Made for agent workflows

Agent thinking — a comet streaks across while your coding agent works. 0:#26d8ff 90ms; 1:#26d8ff 90ms 70ms; … repeat

Done / green build — all eight settle to solid green when the job finishes. #30d158

Needs you — the whole strip double-blinks red when an agent is blocked or a deploy fails. #ff2d20 90ms; off 90ms; #ff2d20 90ms; off 600ms; repeat

Running with the lid closed — a slow aurora drifts in blues and teals to keep a background agent in view. #2e9bff 1.8s pulse; repeat

Battery status, download progress, a pomodoro timer, an ambient now-playing strip — it's eight pixels, do what you like with them.

Technical Specifications

8 individually addressable RGB LEDs (WS2816C)
Fits flush in the MacBook Pro SD card slot (14" / 16")
Mounts as a small filesystem — control via LEDS.TXT, no driver
Works with any tool that can write a file
Appears as a standard SD volume — nothing to install

FAQ

Do I need to install anything? No. SidePulse Pro appears as a small drive. Writing LEDS.TXT updates the lights.
Which Macs have the slot? The 14" and 16" MacBook Pro have a full-size SD card slot. For Macs without one (Air, mini, iMac) use SidePulse Dot.
Does it stick out? No — it sits flush in the slot. You can leave it in permanently.
Can my AI agent control it? Yes. That's the point. Any agent or script that can run echo ... > LEDS.TXT can drive the lights.
What's the animation language? A compact, CSS-inspired DSL for colors, timing, easing, brightness and loops. See the examples above.

First batch — for enthusiasts. This early run is aimed at tinkerers and early adopters. The software is limited today, but it's fully hackable and agent-controllable — the device is just a file, so your scripts and AI agents can do whatever you can imagine.

Included from day one: agent monitoring (Claude & Codex), MacBook battery display, works with the lid closed, and lets your Mac sleep once your agents finish.

Pre-order

SidePulse Pro ships before July 27, 2026. Pre-order now to lock in the first batch — and cancel any time before shipment for a full refund.

Designed and made with care

Pre-order $69

Ships before July 27 · cancel any time

SidePulse Pro