CoincideFeature
Agents outlive the app
Long agent turns shouldn’t depend on a window staying open. Coincide runs its agents in a small background process, the agent host, so you can quit Coincide, install an update or recover from a crash while an agent keeps working.
How it works
The agent host is a helper inside Coincide.app that macOS starts on demand as a LaunchAgent (com.apoorvdarshan.coincide.agent-host). It owns the agent processes for every agent, Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Grok Build, OpenCode and Antigravity alike, and keeps a log of their events. The app talks to it over a private connection on your Mac.
- When you quit, the app detaches. Turns go on, subagents and long commands included, and the host keeps logging.
- When you reopen Coincide, it attaches to every session the host is still running and replays what happened while it was closed, so a reply that was streaming is still streaming.
- When nothing is running, no turn, no approval or question waiting, no background work, the host exits on its own. It never ends a running turn silently; if it ever crashes, the thread says “The agent host stopped unexpectedly”.
Each session is locked to the one process that runs it, so an agent is never started twice for the same thread, even across a relaunch.
Turning it on
It’s on by default: Settings › General › Agents › “Keep agents running when Coincide quits”. macOS has to allow it once. If Coincide is turned off under Allow in the Background in System Settings’ Login Items, Settings shows a notice with an Open Login Items… button; turn Coincide on there.
The same section has “Close idle agents after”, which shuts down agent processes that have been idle for a while to free memory. Threads pick up where they left off on their next message.
Updates without interruptions
An update replaces Coincide.app while agents may still be running. The host runs from its own copy of its files, so an update never changes a running host, and macOS keeps trusting its signature:
- If the new version speaks the same protocol, it adopts the running host’s sessions and asks it to exit once idle.
- If not, the old host’s agents finish there, new sessions run in the app meanwhile, and Coincide switches to the new host once the old one is gone.
See Updating for how updates are downloaded and installed.
When agents run in the app instead
| Situation | What happens |
|---|---|
| The setting is off | Agents run inside Coincide and stop when it quits. |
| Coincide isn’t allowed in Login Items | Same, until you allow it. |
| The host doesn’t answer | A new turn waits a few seconds, then starts in the app. Coincide keeps trying to reach the host in the background. |
| A build without a Developer ID signature, or a development build | The host needs a signed build, so agents run in the app. |
Settings › General › Agents shows which of these applies. Quitting asks first when agents running in the app would stop.
Things to know
- The host keeps agents running while your Mac is awake. A MacBook that sleeps pauses them; Keep Awake can keep it awake on long jobs, even with the lid closed.
- Terminals and the browser belong to the app, so they stop when Coincide quits.
- Scheduled tasks start only while Coincide is open; a run they start keeps going after you quit, like any turn.
- While Coincide is closed, the agent host posts the notifications itself, when a turn finishes or fails or an agent needs approval or an answer, if notifications are on. Clicking one opens Coincide.
- The host runs only on your Mac and talks only to the app and the agents; it sends nothing anywhere else (see the privacy policy).