Local-only · Menu-bar · macOS 14+

Know the moment your Mac changes.

Nightlatch: a security-change diary for your Mac — not another 'protected!' app. It records your Mac’s security baseline and tells you the moment something drifts — a new LaunchAgent, a remote-access toggle, a new listening port.

$19 founding-user price (goes to $29 after the first 150 licenses) · Notarized · zero telemetry · nothing to quarantine

This is an early-warning change monitor. It does not replace antivirus, EDR, firewall, backups, or professional incident response.
Nightlatch wordmark
Quiet → LaunchAgent dropped → Changes detected → Export → Mark reviewed.
Quiet Changes detected Monitoring incomplete Porch Light
Why now

Your Mac changed. Did you notice?

Coding agents, terminal automation, and always-on developer Macs are a new kind of attack surface. In July 2026 alone, a fake “Claude Code installer” ad delivered an infostealer that persisted through a disguised LaunchAgent — the exact category of change most people never look for. Nightlatch watches for it continuously, and tells you in plain English when it happens.

How it works

Baseline. Watch. Review.

1. Baseline

First launch records your Mac’s current security-relevant state — persistence items, remote access settings, listening ports, security posture.

2. Watch

Nightlatch rescans automatically every few minutes and on demand, comparing against your clean baseline.

3. Review

Changes appear as a readable timeline. Mark reviewed, export a redacted report, move on.

What it watches

Multi-domain drift, in plain English.

Feature · Porch Light

Nightlatch’s Porch Light indicator

Porch Light is Nightlatch’s named resource-shape indicator — a resettable green / yellow / red signal that means check the porch, I heard something. It shows when this Mac’s joint CPU, memory, energy, disk, and network behavior has statistically drifted from its own baseline.

It does not name a process, cause, or verdict. A nightlatch is a passive lock; a porch light comes on because something triggered it. The job is to say something is here — without pretending to know what.

Settled

Resource shape: normal

Drifted

Resource shape: shifted — nothing identified

Distorted

Significant, sustained divergence from baseline

Porch Light ships in v1.0 (not the $19 MVP binary). MVP already never says Quiet unless monitoring is complete. Porch Light extends the same honesty to resource shape: if sensors fail, it shows Shape monitoring unavailable — never a false green.

This indicator reflects a statistical shape change in resource use, not a diagnosis. It does not identify a cause, a process, or malware.

Honesty

What it is NOT

Nightlatch is not antivirus, not EDR, and not a firewall. It doesn’t block, quarantine, or delete anything. It’s an early-warning change diary — think of it as noticing a stranger’s car slow down outside your house, not catching them inside. When Nightlatch can’t see something, it says “Monitoring incomplete.” It never tells you “Quiet” unless it actually is.

This is an early-warning change monitor. It does not replace antivirus, EDR, firewall, backups, or professional incident response.
Audience

Who it’s for

Built for
  • Developers running Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, or custom automation on an always-on Mac
  • Small studios who want a readable security timeline without enterprise weight
  • Privacy-conscious users who won’t install a cloud security agent
Not (yet) for
  • Enterprise fleet management
  • Anyone expecting automatic blocking or quarantine
  • iOS
How it compares

Free tools do one job. Nightlatch is the multi-domain diary.

Nightlatch Little Snitch BlockBlock LuLu KnockKnock
Continuous baseline drift Yes Partial Persistence only Network only On-demand
Multi-domain story Yes No Limited No Limited
Local-only Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Price $19 founding → $29 after 150 licenses $50–60 Free Free Free

Full comparison →

Pricing
Nightlatch — founding-user price
$19 one-time founding

Goes to $29 after the first 150 licenses
Lifetime updates through v1.x · 14-day refund · No subscription
Notarized · zero telemetry · nothing to quarantine

Buy on Gumroad →
This is an early-warning change monitor. It does not replace antivirus, EDR, firewall, backups, or professional incident response.
Demo

30–45 seconds, no narration.

Demo GIF placeholder — Quiet → LaunchAgent → Attention timeline → Export → Mark reviewed.

Capture pending (ORCH M-06). Poster uses brand wordmark until then.

FAQ

Answers, short.

Is this antivirus?

No. See our disclosure page.

Does anything leave my Mac?

No — all detection and storage is local. See Privacy.

What is Porch Light?

Nightlatch’s Porch Light indicator is a green/yellow/red resource-shape signal. It means something about this Mac’s resource use shifted — not a diagnosis. Coming in v1.0.

What if Nightlatch can’t see something?

It reports “Monitoring incomplete,” never a false “Quiet.”

Do I need Full Disk Access?

Optional — improves privacy-permission visibility, not required for core detection.

Refunds?

14 days, no questions asked, through Gumroad.

Related AI incidents

Related AI incidents worth knowing about

Selected from the AI Incident Database, an independent, open catalog of real-world AI harms. We link out — we don’t reproduce their reporting.

Nightlatch is built for AI-agent intrusion and tool-misuse risk on a Mac you own — not a claim that models are breaking out of every machine. Local Nightlatch watches for unexpected security-relevant changes; it does not issue malware verdicts or actuate containment.

Status: pending_human_review

No curated incidents are published here yet. Phase 1 is static-only: a human must approve each entry before it goes live.

Incident data via the AI Incident Database (incidentdatabase.ai). Nightlatch does not verify or endorse third-party incident reports beyond linking to the original source.