What is BuildCaptain?

BuildCaptain is a native macOS app that keeps your Jenkins pipelines one glance away. It lives in your menu bar, shows the live status of the pipelines you pinned, and opens into a full dashboard with a stage graph, console output, and run controls — so you never keep a browser tab open just to watch CI.

What it does

• Pinned pipelines in the menu bar — the icon reflects your builds' state; the popover shows each pinned pipeline with one-click run buttons.
• Stage graph & logs — nested and parallel stages laid out visually, with per-stage console output in a resizable drawer.
• Run, stop, rebuild — trigger builds with string, text, boolean, choice, and password parameters; stop running builds; rerun with the same parameters.
• Server activity — running builds across all executors, the build queue (with cancel), agents/nodes, and recent build history.
• Notifications — a pinned pipeline fails or recovers, or a build you started finishes.
• AI agent access — optionally let Claude Code, Codex, or any MCP client start exactly the builds you allow, with parameter allow-lists and one-click approvals. See Install the BuildCaptain CLI.

What it needs

• macOS 14 or newer.
• A Jenkins server reachable over trusted HTTPS (plain HTTP is refused by design).
• The Pipeline Graph View plugin on Jenkins — it supplies the stage tree, step logs, stop, and rerun endpoints.
• Your Jenkins username and an API token. See Connect your Jenkins server.

What it deliberately does not do

BuildCaptain has no accounts, no cloud backend, and no telemetry. It talks to exactly one server: your Jenkins. Your API token is stored in the macOS Keychain and never leaves your Mac in the clear — more in Security & privacy.

Where to go next

Start with connecting your Jenkins server, then take the tour of the app.