AI Overlay for Karat Interview Engineer Sessions on Mac
Karat is a third-party interview service: a contracted Interview Engineer (IVE), who is a working software developer, runs your hour-long technical screen on behalf of a hiring company. The session happens over video with screen sharing and is recorded for the recruiter and for Karat internal quality review.
Karat is the highest-monitoring scenario among modern coding interviews because a real human is on the other end of the call watching you work in real time. The IVE joins through Karat browser-based interview console: a fully-toolled IDE, a webcam panel, a screen-share panel, and a notes pane. The 60-minute session typically runs 10 to 15 minutes of behavioral and domain warmup followed by 40 to 45 minutes of programming.
Key points
- Karat IVEs are contractors, not employees of the hiring company; they follow a fixed rubric.
- The interview console is a browser tab, not an installed app, so there is no kernel extension or process enumeration available.
- Screen sharing is delivered over WebRTC with getDisplayMedia as the capture source.
- Recordings stored by Karat are encoded from the already-filtered stream.
- The IVE expects you to narrate your reasoning; the overlay is silent.
- Karat now also delivers adaptive assessments built on the former Triplebyte content library.
How it works
┌── macOS host ─────────────────────────────────┐ │ ┌── browser tab + WebRTC ──────┐ │ │ │ Live screen share to │ ← stream │ │ │ remote human proctor │ follows │ │ └──────────────────────────────┘ capture │ │ APIs │ │ ┌── LDBypass overlay ──────────┐ │ │ │ Excluded from getDisplayMedia│ ← hidden │ │ └──────────────────────────────┘ from share│ └───────────────────────────────────────────────┘
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 | ✓ |
| Karat live IVE session | WebRTC screen share, window privacy honored | ✓ |
| Karat adaptive assessment (Triplebyte legacy) | Browser-only async pad | ✓ |
Common questions
The Karat IVE is watching me live - can they spot the overlay through screen share?
No. The IVE screen-share feed is the output of macOS getDisplayMedia, which strips windows marked private before any frame leaves the kernel.
Does the recorded session show the overlay later?
No. The recording is encoded from the same stream the IVE saw.
Will Karat audit team find it if they review my session?
No. Karat internal reviewers watch the recorded video, which is the post-filter stream.
Can the IVE see the overlay on my webcam if I look at it?
The webcam shows your face, not your screen.
Does Karat install any local software on my Mac?
No. Karat interviews run entirely in the browser.