Deskbell
Ask Deskbell, then returnA quick bar for the questions in between
A quick bar behaves like the search launcher you already know. Press a shortcut and a small input window appears over your current work; type the question, read the answer, dismiss it. Nothing else opens, and nothing needs setting up before the first ask.
Deskbell gives the small stuff that kind of entry. It waits in the tray, out of the way, until the hotkey brings it up — and it goes away the moment you are done.
Small tasks are the whole job
Deskbell does not try to be your main workspace. It is built for questions that take one answer and are over — the kind you would otherwise skip, or route through a tool that is too big for them.
“What does ‘sunk cost’ mean, in one sentence?”
“Which port does HTTPS use by default?”
“How would you say this politely in Japanese?”
“Soften this reply without losing the point.”
“Split this total three ways, evenly.”
Press a hotkey and the quick bar is ready
- 1Summon it anywhere
The default shortcut is Control + Option + Space on macOS and Control + Alt + Space on Windows. Change it in settings if it collides with another app.
- 2Ask directly
The quick bar opens over your current work, so the answer arrives without moving anything out of the way.
- 3Return to your work
Dismiss it when you are done. The conversation is kept, so a follow-up can pick up where you left off.
A plan priced for trivial tasks
Trivial questions should not be billed like serious work. Deskbell Plus is $2.99 per month and includes 400 model calls in each monthly billing period; Deskbell Pro is $5.99 per month for 1,000 calls. The free trial comes with 10 calls in every billing period — often enough to learn whether a quick bar fits your day.
CHIME
Ready without an API key
Chime, the built-in model, is selected for exactly these tasks — explanations, lookups, translations, and small edits. It is what keeps the plan at $2.99.
BYOK
Bring your own model
Connect an OpenAI-compatible provider you already use. With your own key, Deskbell costs nothing.
When agent tools are enabled, one question may use several model calls, and each call counts toward the allowance.
Your main task never waits
The point of a quick bar is that the big thing never stops. Claude, Codex, or a multi-agent run keeps working while you ask elsewhere — you do not pause it, and you do not wait for it to free up.
Because the small question lives in its own window, asking it never becomes a detour: no digging through a busy project chat, no switching to a lighter model and back, no re-orienting once the answer arrives. For the general case, see the hotkey assistant guide.
A boundary around the small talk
Deskbell keeps its own conversation history, stored on your device, so quick questions never enter the context of your Claude, Codex, or multi-agent project. The main task keeps a clean context, and your side questions get a tidy home of their own.
To answer a question, relevant messages, images, and tool results are still sent to the model service in use; web tools also access the corresponding websites.