How a Frustrated Indie Developer Ended Up Building a Headless Mac Utility

🔍 Discovering AI Agents

I discovered OpenClaw early on — back when it was still called clawdbot. The idea of having an AI agent that could actually see and control my Mac was mind-blowing. I started using it for all sorts of automation: app testing, generating screenshots for the App Store, tedious UI tasks that I hated doing manually.

Quickly became a heavy user. This was exactly what I needed as a solo developer.

😤 Where Things Went Wrong

Running OpenClaw on a headless Mac Mini turned out to be... a nightmare. Something would break every few days:

• ✗ Long automation tasks would randomly die because macOS decided to sleep — even with all the Energy Saver settings maxed out. caffeinate helped but wasn't bulletproof.
• ✗ Screenshots looked like they were from 1995. Turns out without a physical display, macOS doesn't bother with GPU acceleration.
• ✗ Bought a dummy HDMI plug off Amazon. Worked great for 2 weeks. Then one day it just... stopped being recognized. No idea why.
• ✗ I wanted OpenClaw to react to notification sounds from apps. But routing system audio to a mic input on macOS? Surprisingly difficult.
• ✗ Also needed a way to mute the audio output — my 🦞 was browsing X at 3am and some random video woke me up. Not fun.

🔧 What I Tried First

To be fair, I found existing solutions. Ended up running Amphetamine + BetterDisplay + BlackHole together. And honestly? They worked. These are solid, well-made apps.

But for my simple needs, they felt like overkill. Too many settings, too many menus, too many things to configure. I just wanted something I could toggle on and forget about.

⚡ The Rabbit Hole

As a developer, my instinct was "I'll just fix this myself." Famous last words, right?

Started digging into Apple's APIs. Found out there's actually a proper way to prevent sleep (IOPMLib assertions). Discovered a private API for virtual displays (CGVirtualDisplay). Realized I could build audio routing directly using CoreAudio.

A week of intense coding later, I had a working app. One window. Four toggles. Done.

🎉 Today

My Mac Mini finally works the way I always wanted. OpenClaw runs 24/7 without hiccups. Virtual displays give me proper resolution. Audio routing just works. Sleep? What sleep?

I polished up the app and figured other folks running headless Macs might find it useful too. Whether you're deploying AI agents, running a build server, or just want to access your Mac Mini remotely without the frustrations — hope MacMate helps.

Happy automating! 🐾