Adding menubar-pet.app under System Settings > Login Items stores a bookmark, which macOS resolves to the versioned Cellar path at the moment it is created:
/opt/homebrew/Cellar/ambient-companions/1.2.0/menubar-pet.app
That directory goes away at the first brew cleanup after an upgrade, and the login item then fails silently — exactly the kind of quiet permanent degradation v1.0 was about removing.
Done when:
- A LaunchAgent is shipped that references Homebrew's version-independent
optsymlink, which launchd stores as a string and follows at each launch. - No
KeepAlive: the menu has a Quit item and quitting must stick. - The README stops recommending Login Items and says why.
closed by commit 9f485f4327 by cmc: Ship a LaunchAgent for the menu-bar face
2026-09-04 17:40 UTC