AI Overlay for CoderPad Live Interviews on Mac
CoderPad Live is the in-browser pair-programming room used by GitHub, Spotify, Lyft, and most of the big-name engineering interview pipelines. Each session records every keystroke, every paste, every focus loss, and replays the whole thing in Playback Mode after End Interview is pressed.
CoderPad anti-cheating model is built around what their docs call the playback bar. After the interview ends, the pad transitions to Playback Mode with a per-participant track of keystrokes, yellow dots for external paste events, and orange dots for moments the candidate browser left focus on the IDE. The AI Notetaker layers a transcript on top, and reviewers can scrub to any moment to see what was on the editor at that exact tick.
Key points
- Playback Mode replays every editor keystroke per participant with a scrubbable timeline.
- Yellow dots in the playback bar mark external paste events; type, do not paste, to avoid them.
- Orange dots mark left IDE focus moments; the overlay does not steal focus from the browser tab.
- AI Notetaker transcripts come from microphone audio, which is unrelated to screen content.
- CoderPad optional WebRTC video call is the only path that could share host-screen pixels, and that path obeys macOS window privacy.
How it works
┌── macOS host ─────────────────────────────────┐ │ ┌── Safari/Chrome ─────────────┐ │ │ │ ┌── proctoring extension ─┐ │ │ │ │ │ Browser screen-capture │ │ ← reads │ │ │ │ → exam recording │ │ visible │ │ │ └─────────────────────────┘ │ pixels │ │ └──────────────────────────────┘ │ │ │ │ ┌── LDBypass overlay ──────────┐ ← rendered │ │ │ ChatGPT / Claude / Ollama │ excluded │ │ └──────────────────────────────┘ from cap │ └───────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Compatibility on Mac
| macOS 14 Sonoma+ | Yes (required for window-privacy API) | ✓ |
| Apple Silicon (M1/M2/M3/M4) | Native arm64 build | ✓ |
| Intel Macs (2019+) | Universal binary supported | ✓ |
| CoderPad pad in browser | Records in-pad keystrokes and pastes only | ✓ |
| CoderPad WebRTC video call | getDisplayMedia respects window privacy | ✓ |
Common questions
Does Playback Mode show my desktop or just the pad?
Just the pad. CoderPad recording is a structured event log of editor edits, runs, pastes, and focus changes.
Will reading from the overlay register as a paste event?
No. A paste event fires when the browser injects clipboard text into the editor.
What about the orange focus-loss dots?
Those fire when the browser tab loses focus. Toggling the overlay with the global hotkey does not steal focus from the browser.
Does the AI Notetaker pick up the overlay?
No. The AI Notetaker transcribes microphone audio into text.
Will the interviewer see the overlay if I share my screen on the video call?
No. macOS getDisplayMedia filters out windows marked with the privacy flag before frames ever reach WebRTC.