claudelab 0.1.9

A visual terminal companion for Claude Code — animated isometric 2.5D office with AI engineers working

   _____ _                 _        _           _
  / ____| |               | |      | |         | |
 | |    | | __ _ _   _  __| | ___  | |     __ _| |__
 | |    | |/ _` | | | |/ _` |/ _ \ | |    / _` | '_ \
 | |____| | (_| | |_| | (_| |  __/ | |___| (_| | |_) |
  \_____|_|\__,_|\__,_|\__,_|\___| |______\__,_|_.__/

ClaudeLab

A visual terminal companion for Claude Code. Run it in a tmux pane or a second terminal and watch an isometric 2.5D office of AI "engineers" working while Claude Code edits your code, runs tests, and debugs issues.

Zero dependencies. Pure Python + curses. Works on any Linux terminal with truecolor or 256-color support.

Rendering Modes

Mode	Style	Requirements
Isometric (default)	2.5D diamond-tile office, brick walls, depth-sorted furniture	Truecolor or 256-color terminal
Voxel	Half-block pixel art, flat perspective	Truecolor or 256-color terminal
Sixel	High-res pixel graphics (4x resolution)	Sixel-capable terminal (e.g. foot, mlterm)
ASCII	Classic text-mode office	Any terminal

The default auto mode selects isometric for capable terminals, falling back to ASCII.

Features

• 6 animated scenes that change based on what Claude Code is doing:

  • Thinking -- agent sits with animated thought bubbles cycling through dots, question marks, and lightbulbs
  • Coding -- two agents type at desks with scrolling code on isometric monitors
  • Debugging -- red-tinted office with whiteboard error diagrams, agents point and examine bugs
  • Running -- control panel with LED grid, rotating gears, and progress bar on the isometric floor
  • Building -- conveyor belt with animated rollers carries colored code blocks across diamond tiles
  • Idle -- agent drinks coffee with rising steam while another leans back and chats

• Dynamic scaling -- the isometric office grid scales to fill your terminal, from 40 to 200+ columns

• Day/night cycle -- the office window reflects real system time

• Activity detection via Claude Code hooks (primary), JSONL log watching (secondary), and inotify filesystem monitoring (tertiary)

• Smooth animation at configurable FPS (default 8)

• Terminal resize handled gracefully

Quick Start

pip install claudelab
claudelab install

That's it. The install command auto-detects the hook script, configures Claude Code hooks in ~/.claude/settings.json, and verifies everything works. No manual JSON editing needed.

Or install from source:

git clone https://github.com/ovexro/claudelab.git
cd claudelab
pip install -e .
claudelab install

Usage

Basic

Open a second terminal (or a tmux pane) and run:

claudelab

Then use Claude Code in your main terminal as usual. ClaudeLab detects the activity and animates the matching scene.

Demo Mode

To see all scenes cycle through without needing Claude Code:

claudelab --demo

tmux Setup

tmux new-session -s work
tmux split-window -h 'claudelab'

CLI Options

Flag / Command	Default	Description
claudelab install		Auto-configure Claude Code hooks
claudelab doctor		Diagnose setup issues
claudelab uninstall		Remove hooks cleanly
--renderer {auto,iso,sixel,voxel,ascii}	auto	Rendering mode
--theme {dark,light}	dark	Colour theme
--fps N	8	Animation frame rate (1-30)
--demo	off	Cycle through all scenes automatically

Troubleshooting

If something isn't working, run the built-in diagnostics:

claudelab doctor

It checks hook configuration, permissions, state file freshness, Python version, and terminal capabilities — and tells you exactly what to fix.

How It Works

ClaudeLab runs a curses-based render loop at ~8 FPS. Each frame:

1. Detect the current activity (hook state file, JSONL logs, or inotify)
2. Select the matching scene (thinking, coding, debugging, running, building, idle)
3. Render the isometric office with the scene's animation frame into the terminal

The isometric office dynamically sizes its diamond-tile floor grid to fill the terminal. Brick-textured walls, depth-sorted furniture (desks, monitors, chairs, server rack, plant), and character sprites are drawn back-to-front. Each scene adds its own overlays -- thought bubbles, conveyor belts, control panels, debug whiteboards, and more.

Activity Detection Priority

1. Hook state file (/tmp/claudelab.state) -- written by the hook script on every tool use. Most reliable.
2. JSONL log scanning -- parses Claude Code's log files for recent tool use entries.
3. inotify -- watches the working directory for filesystem changes and infers activity.
4. Timeouts -- falls back to "thinking" after 10s, "idle" after 60s.

Contributing

Contributions welcome! Ideas:

• New scenes or agent animations
• More furniture / office decorations
• Windows / macOS support
• Configurable office layouts
• Multiple character appearances

git clone https://github.com/ovexro/claudelab.git
cd claudelab
pip install -e .
claudelab --demo

License

MIT -- see LICENSE.