April 1, 2026
Static or magic? You decide
Show HN: Baton – A desktop app for developing with AI agents
Baton puts AI sidekicks in your computer window — fans curious, others roast the site
TLDR: Baton is a new desktop app that runs AI helpers inside your real command line, aiming for full control instead of a simplified interface. Commenters split between excitement about fast, resume-from-anything sessions and frustration with a broken, distracting website—and they want clear differences from rivals like Conductor.
Baton hit Show HN promising AI sidekicks in your actual command line — the text window where you type — not a toy wrapper. It’s a desktop app that runs “agents” in real terminal sessions for full power.
But the crowd’s first reaction? The website. User toastal says the Features page is just blank gray boxes. sausajez reports jittery thin blue lines and literal “television static” in the background that made reading impossible. Cue the vibe shift from hype to eye strain. Somewhere in the chaos, drewfis dropped a drive‑by meme: “Go away, I’m baitin’!” because of course Hacker News can’t resist.
Others tried to steer back to the product. twostorytower asked the big one: how is this different from Conductor? throwaw12 loved the demo and asked how Baton restores old workspaces so fast — is it tmux (a power‑user terminal tool) or something else? People are intrigued by speed but want proof and clarity.
Verdict from the comments: the idea slaps, the packaging… not so much. If Baton can fix the static, explain its edge, and show those “instant” sessions for real, the crowd might pick up the Baton and run with it.
Key Points
- •Baton is a desktop application for developing with AI agents.
- •The app is designed to be CLI-native, aligning with AI coding agents’ workflows.
- •Users can run any agent in real terminal sessions.
- •Baton provides full feature support rather than a limited wrapper.
- •The product emphasizes operating directly in terminal environments.