claude-arcade 0.5.0

Play games while Claude thinks — a collection of terminal mini-games that hook into Claude Code

claude-arcade

Play mini-games in your terminal while Claude thinks.

Hooks into Claude Code so a game launches automatically every time Claude runs a tool — and disappears the moment it's done. Your terminal is fully restored, nothing is lost.

Install

pipx install claude-arcade

pipx is recommended so the package gets its own isolated environment.
Plain pip install claude-arcade works too.

Quick start

# 1. One-time setup — writes hooks into ~/.claude/settings.json
claude-arcade setup

# 2. Use Claude Code as normal
claude

# The bird game now appears automatically whenever Claude uses a tool.
# It disappears and restores your terminal when Claude is done.

Play manually

claude-arcade play        # Bird Hunt (default)
claude-arcade play bird   # same thing

Bird Hunt controls

Key	Action
Arrow keys / WASD	Move crosshair
SPACE	Shoot
Q	Quit

Birds fly across the screen at different speeds and are worth different points:

Bird	Points	Speed
>->	3	Fast
>~~>	1	Normal
>°~°>	2	Slow

Remove hooks

claude-arcade unsetup

How it works

claude-arcade setup adds three hooks to ~/.claude/settings.json:

• PreToolUse → claude-arcade start — forks a background process that takes over the terminal alternate screen buffer and runs the game.
• PostToolUse + Stop → claude-arcade stop — signals the game to exit and restores your terminal exactly as you left it.

Because the game runs on the alternate screen buffer, all of Claude's output is preserved underneath.

Requirements

• macOS or Linux
• Python 3.9+
• Claude Code CLI

License

MIT