backseat

A Computer Use MCP that allows you and your agent to work simultaneously

get it running watch the story ↓

before · 01

One Mac. One cursor.

Whoever holds the pointer and the keyboard is driving.

BEFORE

you're writing a list00%

before · 02

Today: the agent takes over.

It moves your pointer and pulls apps in front of you. You wait.

BEFORE

you're writing, full screen00%

with backseat · 03

backseat: you both work at once.

The agent works in its own window, outlined in green. Your pointer and keyboard stay yours.

(claude's cursor is drawn for the story. on your Mac, the green outline is all you'd see.)

WITH BACKSEAT

you keep writing00%

with backseat · 04

It can use any app.

Buttons, fields, menus, scripts. All in the background.

WITH BACKSEAT

it reads the window00%

with backseat · 05

It never gets in your way.

No beeps, no stray menus. If an app jumps forward, you get your focus back in milliseconds.

WITH BACKSEAT

you, typing00%

What we measured.

Measured on a real Mac.

Focus, before and after

a background Finder “Go to Folder”

before the fix

Pulled out of the full-screen app to the desktop. Focus never came back.

backseat now

Finder still jumps forward on its own. backseat hands focus back within 3–23 ms (measured over 6 activations), and your Space never changes.

0.0 s

focus on your app focus elsewhere

The bench, replayed

mac-agent-bench · 5 tasks · a real Mac

The same agent on the same tasks, before and after backseat's latest tool changes. Hit play and each bar grows in agent wall time. calls are the agent's tool calls.

files-sort−21.3 s · calls 8 → 5

before

after

move-conflict−2.0 s · calls 5 → 5

before

after

inventory-note−21.5 s · calls 9 → 5

before

after

grocery-edit+3.4 s · calls 6 → 6 · slower

before

after

dedup-clipboard−19.8 s · calls 7 → 5

before

after

0.0 s @10×

Totals: 35 calls / 153.2 s before, 26 calls / 92.0 s after. grocery-edit got slower, and it stays on the chart.

How it works.

One rule: nothing backseat does activates the app it's driving. Activation is what takes your keyboard focus, and what drags you across Spaces.

01AXUIElement

Accessibility first

Reading UI trees, pressing buttons, setting values, typing at the caret, choosing menu items and scrolling all go through the Accessibility API. Nothing gets activated.

02CGEventPostToPid

Clicks addressed to one window

For canvases, drags and right-clicks, backseat builds mouse events stamped with a window number and posts them straight to that app's process. WindowServer never routes them, so there's no click-to-activate, even on covered windows.

03per-process keys

Keys to one process

Shortcuts and typed keys reach a background app without touching your keyboard focus. ⌘ shortcuts are chosen from the menu bar, or refused when the item is disabled.

04run_script

Apple Events for the rest

Save, Bold, New Folder: commands that act on the focused window are disabled in an app that isn't active. run_script sends Apple Events instead, which reach scriptable apps without bringing them forward.

05FocusGuard

A safety net

Some apps activate themselves anyway (Finder's Go to Folder, Safari's New Window). backseat hands focus straight back to your window and its Space, and keeps checking for a second in case the activation lands late.

06ScreenCaptureKit

Eyes on one window

Screenshots capture a single window, even one on another Space or off screen. The green outline is drawn only where that window is visible to you, and is left out of the agent's screenshots.

The honest limitation. An app that isn't scriptable and has no on-window control for a focus-only command can't run that command in the background. Doing it anyway means briefly taking focus, or running the app in a separate macOS session.

Install it.

One command builds backseat and adds it to Claude Code.

$ curl -fsSL https://backseat.akshith.io/install.sh | sh

then ask for something and keep working: “tidy my Downloads while I finish this email.”