# Show HN: Beckon, distinct sounds for what your AI coding agent needs > Source: > Published: 2026-08-28 07:12:17+00:00 Distinct sounds for your AI coding agent, so you don't have to watch the terminal. beckon binds to your agent's lifecycle hooks and plays a different sound depending on what it needs: | Sound | Meaning | What to do | |---|---|---| | rising chime | finished its turn | go look | | insistent sting | blocked on your decision | go unblock it | | falling tone | it failed | go read the error | | slow pulse | rate-limited or throttled | wait | A single undifferentiated ding tells you something happened. It doesn't tell you whether to get up. ``` cargo install beckon-cli # the binary is called `beckon` beckon init # binds the hooks — shows a diff and asks first beckon test # hear the active pack ``` Or from source: `git clone https://github.com/Isa1asN/beckon && cd beckon && cargo install --path .` `init` prints the exact change it will make to `~/.claude/settings.json` , copies the file to `settings.json.beckon-backup-` beside itself, and only then writes. `beckon uninstall` removes beckon's entries and leaves everything else alone. It refuses to touch a settings file it cannot round-trip: invalid JSON, invalid UTF-8, a non-object root, or an unfamiliar `hooks` shape. A file it does accept is re-serialised, so non-canonical formatting (CRLF, tabs, duplicate keys) is normalised. Content is preserved; the backup keeps the original bytes. | Builds | Test suite | Audio verified | | |---|---|---|---| | Linux x86-64 | yes | yes | yes | | macOS | yes | in CI | no | | Windows | yes | in CI | no | CI runs the full suite on all three. CI runners have no sound device, so playback there goes through the null backend — the macOS and Windows audio paths compile and are exercised structurally, but nobody has heard them. Reports welcome. Also built without the `embedded-audio` feature, which is the shape a fully static musl binary takes: no cpal, no libasound, falling back to a system player. Requires Claude Code. Other agents are planned; the adapter seam exists and is documented in [docs/DESIGN.md](/Isa1asN/beckon/blob/main/docs/DESIGN.md). ``` beckon test # play every sound in the active pack beckon packs # list packs beckon use cipher # switch pack beckon mute 30m # quiet for a while (45s, 2h, …); unmute ends it beckon doctor # why is it quiet? every reason, listed beckon config set volume 0.4 beckon uninstall ``` By default beckon: - says nothing when a turn finished in under 30 seconds — you were still watching - always plays a blocking alert, however fast it arrived, because a permission prompt stalls progress - doesn't repeat the same sound for the same session within 1.5 seconds - stays quiet for a tool failure, since a failing test is normal work ( `beckon config set events.tool-failed true` to change that) - ignores a tool you interrupted yourself - caps concurrent sounds at 8 If it's quiet and you didn't ask it to be, `beckon doctor` says why. Each project gets a stable transposition from a consonant scale, so `api-server` and `worktree-auth` sound different with the same pack, and two sounding together harmonise rather than clash. Nothing to configure; disable with `beckon config set identity.per_project false` . Rate limiting is scoped per session and per state. A machine-wide throttle would let one agent's completion chime swallow another's permission alert. Three ship inside the binary, all original, all CC0: **aurora**— calm starship computer. Soft triangle arpeggios, long reverb.** cipher**— stealth-game alert. Short, dry, cuts through.** unit-7**— deadpan lab robot. Mechanical FM bleeps, no reverb. A pack is a TOML file, not a folder of audio. Sounds are synth recipes — oscillators, envelopes, filters — about a kilobyte of text: ``` [sounds.done] type = "synth" reverb = { room = 0.55, mix = 0.34 } [[sounds.done.layer]] wave = "triangle" notes = ["C5", "E5", "G5"] step_ms = 92 filter = { kind = "lowpass", cutoff_hz = 3200 } ``` So a pack is provably original, weighs nothing, and can be reviewed as a diff. Auditing a folder of binary blobs for licence provenance is what makes shared sound libraries impractical. To write one, drop a `pack.toml` in `~/.local/share/beckon/packs//` . It shadows a built-in of the same name, so you can fork `aurora` and keep the name. `beckon test ` to hear it. You don't need to author a pack to use your own audio: ``` beckon config set sounds.needs-you ~/sounds/alert.wav ``` Anything you don't override falls through to the active pack, at every step of the fallback chain — replace `failed` and `rate-limited` follows it. wav, ogg, flac and mp3 are supported. The path is checked when you set it, so a typo fails immediately rather than becoming silence you notice days later. Or write the table directly: ``` # ~/.config/beckon/config.toml [sounds] needs-you = "~/sounds/alert.wav" done = "~/sounds/ding.wav" ``` `[sounds]` is honoured only in your own config, never in a project's `.beckon.toml` . A repository you clone can change *when* beckon makes a noise; it cannot name files on your machine and have them opened by a media decoder. Sample files are bounded: regular files only, 10 MiB and 30 seconds maximum, and a pack's samples must resolve inside the pack after symlinks are followed. - No daemon. Nothing runs between hooks. Your agent invokes beckon, it decides in ~5ms, hands playback to a detached child, and exits. - No network at hook time. - No telemetry. - Packs are data, never executed. - Exits 0 unconditionally — bad config, no audio device, corrupt input, panic. beckon binds hooks that block the agent on a non-zero exit, so this is verified against the release binary, where `panic = "abort"` puts it beyond the reach of`cargo test` . - Publish to crates.io - Hear it on macOS and Windows (CI builds and tests there already) - `beckon install github:user/repo` — packs from git - A browsable community pack index - SSH: escape sequences so a remote agent alerts your local terminal - Adapters for Codex, Cursor, Gemini - npm and Homebrew distribution ``` git clone https://github.com/Isa1asN/beckon && cd beckon ./scripts/install-hooks.sh # pre-commit: fmt + clippy ./check.sh --release # everything CI enforces ``` `main` requires a pull request and **signed commits**. If you don't already sign, GitHub will reject the push without much explanation: ``` git config --global gpg.format ssh git config --global user.signingkey ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub git config --global commit.gpgsign true ``` Then add the same key to GitHub under Settings → SSH and GPG keys with key type **Signing Key** — an authentication key does not count, and that catches most people out. CI runs fmt, clippy with `-D warnings` , the suite on Linux/macOS/Windows, a build with no audio backend, an MSRV check, the release-binary safety script, and crates.io packaging. `./check.sh --release` covers everything except the other two platforms. New sound packs are welcome — a pack is a TOML file, so a pull request adding one is reviewable as a diff. Design notes: [docs/DESIGN.md](/Isa1asN/beckon/blob/main/docs/DESIGN.md). Code is MIT OR Apache-2.0. The built-in packs are CC0-1.0.