Everything Caduceus does
A complete checklist of built-in behaviour. All of the offline features work without Hermes, an API key, or an account.
Menu bar & windows
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Menu bar presence
- Lives in the menu bar (no Dock icon)
- Open from Spotlight or Applications like any app — search Caduceus
- Show or hide the floating staff from the tray
- Quit, open Settings, open Command Center from the tray
- Optional launch at login
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Settings window
- General, Appearance, Shortcuts, Command Center, Clipboard, Voice, AI, Learn tabs
- Live preview of staff size, custom mark, colours, and idle opacity
- Validate and rebind global hotkeys without restart
- Reset to factory defaults
The floating staff
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Interaction
- Always-on-top pixel caduceus on a click-through window
- Stays visible over other apps’ full-screen mode (MacParakeet-style)
- Resizable staff (28–160 px) and optional custom pixel-art upload
- Hover to fan out up to six shortcut icons (configurable order)
- Click the staff to open the Command Center
- Right-click for Settings
- Drag to reposition; position persists across restarts
- Dock to left or right edge by default; custom drag position overrides
- F12 toggle show / hide
- Adaptive cursor polling (saves CPU when the pointer is far away)
- Configurable expand delay and auto-collapse timing
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Shortcut icons on the staff
- User-defined shortcuts (URLs, apps, shell, AppleScript, clipboard view)
- Brand icons or uploaded PNG/JPEG/WebP/GIF per shortcut
- Instant collapse with in-place fade after a shortcut click
Command Center (palette)
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Opening & navigation
- Alt+Space from anywhere (rebindable)
- Keyboard: arrows, Enter to run, Esc to close
- Click-away dismisses (like Spotlight)
- Prefix badge shows which route Enter will take
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Built-in result sources
- Calculator — arithmetic, precedence, %, functions, constants; Enter copies
- App launcher — fuzzy search over every installed application
- Shortcuts — your configured actions from Settings
- Capture — screenshot display; open Screenshot.app to record screen
- Web search fallback when nothing else matches (engine URL is configurable)
- Clipboard history rows when enabled
- Prefix hints when the input is empty
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Prefix routing (examples)
- Plain text → web search URL template
/ → primary AI (Hermes) chat in-window/c → computer-use agent session (Hermes)/v → clipboard search mode- Custom prefix rules: URL templates, commands, AppleScript, etc.
Clipboard history
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Capture & storage
- Watches the system clipboard (text, images, file paths)
- Skips concealed copies (password managers)
- Per-app exclusion list
- SQLite history with configurable max items and poll interval
- Optional ChaCha20-Poly1305 encryption at rest (key in Keychain)
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Using history
- Search, pin, delete, clear (optionally keep pinned)
- Copy any entry back to the clipboard
- Image thumbnails and preview
- Dedicated clipboard mode in the Command Center
Voice & dictation
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Dictation
- F1 or double-click the staff — tap again to stop (no dictation button in the UI)
- Alt+Shift+V hold-to-talk alternative (rebindable)
- Microphone via AVAudioEngine at the macOS audio layer; standard Microphone privacy prompt on first use
- On-device Speech Recognition for live text in the Command Center
- ScreenCaptureKit for system audio on screen recordings (palette capture), not during dictation
- No wake word — mic is only active while you are dictating
- Keyword routing after transcription (search, AI, computer use, clipboard, insert-only)
- Optional auto-submit vs. wait for Enter
- Maximum recording length safety cap
Screenshots & screen recording
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From the Command Center
- Type “screenshot” or “capture” — full display to clipboard + Downloads PNG
- Record options open Apple’s Screenshot app (same flow as macOS)
- Choose mic on/off and system audio via Screenshot toolbar / Options
- Requires Screen Recording permission for captures
Shortcuts & automation
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Shortcut kinds
- Open URL (with
{query} substitution and optional Chrome profile)
- Launch app (bundle id or path)
- Run shell command (quoted
{query}, $CADUCEUS_QUERY env)
- Run AppleScript (macOS)
- Open clipboard history view
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Defaults include
- Gemini, Gmail, Chrome, Claude Desktop, Clipboard — all editable
AI & agents (optional Hermes)
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Hermes Agent integration
- Primary chat via Hermes CLI
- Computer-use tasks with on-screen agent panel
- Install / status checks and setup commands in Settings
- OpenAI-compatible backend for local models or proxy
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What Caduceus does not do itself
- No bundled LLM — Hermes (or your HTTP backend) provides models
- Computer-use screen control is delegated to Hermes, not an in-app loop
Appearance & privacy
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Look & feel
- Accent colour, light/dark/system theme
- Staff size, pop-out radius, icon size, idle opacity, pulse animation
- Glass-style windows with vibrancy on macOS
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Permissions (macOS)
- Microphone — push-to-talk only
- Speech Recognition — on-device transcription
- Screen Recording — screenshots and Screenshot.app recording
- Apple Events — only for user-defined AppleScript shortcuts