Session Kit

Session Kit lets your Claude Code sessions mail each other, hear you and answer aloud. One install brings the five family packages and their Claude Code plugins.

Installation

You need:

• macOS.

• Claude Code.

  • Have Claude Code: nothing to run.

  • No Claude Code: install it with Anthropic's installer.

    curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.sh | bash
    

  • Its "Setup notes" say ~/.local/bin is not in your PATH? The installer does not change your PATH itself. Add the folder with Anthropic's two lines for zsh, the Mac's shell:

    echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.zshrc
    source ~/.zshrc
    

  • Claude Code asks you to sign in the first time you start it.

• Homebrew or at least Apple's Command Line Tools. Homebrew installs the Command Line Tools for you (prerequisites), and the kit needs two of their tools: the plugin lines clone with git, and the ears build a Swift helper with swiftc.

  • Have Homebrew: nothing to run. It installed the Command Line Tools.

  • No Homebrew: get the Command Line Tools alone.

    xcode-select --install
    

• uv.

  • Have uv: nothing to run.

  • No uv: install it.

    curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh
    

  • Then open a new terminal. Until you do, uv is not on your PATH. Or run:

    source ~/.local/bin/env
    

• For a call on a Mac: Homebrew, then ffmpeg from it. A call needs ffmpeg, and Homebrew is how a Mac gets it. The Command Line Tools alone are not enough for a call.

  • Have Homebrew: go on to ffmpeg.

  • No Homebrew: install it with its own installer, from brew.sh.

  • Then install ffmpeg:

    brew install ffmpeg
    

  • Then the speech server, then link the phone: the phone bullets below.

  • A call without Homebrew is the workaround case. This guide does not cover it.

Then install the kit:

uv tool install --python 3.14 sessionkit
claude plugin marketplace add sessionkit/sessionkit
claude plugin install sessionkit@sessionkit

The first line puts the commands on your PATH. The other two install the kit's plugin and the five family plugins it depends on.

• Keep --python 3.14. Without it, uv takes the Python it finds: 3.15, where a voice library has no build yet and the install fails, or the Command Line Tools' 3.11. The kit is tested on 3.14.

• Upgrade with uv tool upgrade sessionkit. It keeps the Python the install chose.

• To reinstall, give the pin again:

  uv tool install --python 3.14 --reinstall sessionkit
  

  Without it, uv drops the pin from its record, or, with --force, builds the kit again on the Python it finds.

• A dialog may ask to install the Command Line Tools. On a Mac without them, the first uv tool install opens it. Click Install and let it finish: the plugin lines need the git it brings. The dialog can open behind the Terminal window: look for it in the Dock or with Cmd-Tab.

• Phone calls are installed, and walked for a session started with session start <name>. A fresh Mac took a real call and passed. A plain claude session does not hear calls you make to it yet. Whether the phone bot signs its mail to your Claude follows your mail carrier: bot mail signing.

• The speech server comes before the phone. A call hears you through it, so it is installed before you link your phone. Linking is sessionphone setup, in sessionphone's docs.

  • No phone: nothing to run now. Hearing and speaking installs the speech server with the rest of the voice.

  • A phone: first Homebrew, then ffmpeg, as the call item under "You need" says.

    brew install ffmpeg
    

  • Then install the speech server. It builds the server and fetches its weights, about 2.9 GB.

    ears services install --only speech
    

  • Then link the phone.

• Then quit Claude Code and start it again, every window of it, before you run anything else.

A plugin installed from the shell loads only when Claude Code starts, so a session that was already open has no plugin commands on its PATH, and no plugin hooks.

The three lines leave the ears without the model they listen with. Fetch it once:

ears install

It downloads the 2.3 MB voice-activity model from GitHub (one pinned release of Silero VAD, checked against its SHA-256) to ~/.cache/ears/silero_vad.onnx, with no sudo, and prints done. Without it the ears cannot hear you, and ears services install, the step that starts them (hearing and speaking), refuses with silero MISSING. The Swift helper is built later, when those services start.

• The mail hooks start off. They tell an agent about new mail between its tool calls. To turn them on, set "hooks": true in ~/.sessionkit/mail/settings/mail.json. The plugin writes that file, with the hooks off, the first time a Claude Code session runs a tool, and it holds other settings too, so change only that key. Never write the file over: that deletes the other keys. This works whether the file is there yet or not, and whether it has a hooks key or not:

  f=~/.sessionkit/mail/settings/mail.json
  if [ -f "$f" ]; then
    perl -0777 -pi -e '
      if (/"hooks"\s*:/) { s/"hooks"\s*:\s*false/"hooks": true/ }
      elsif (/\A\s*\{\s*\}\s*\z/) { s/\{\s*\}/{"hooks": true}/ }
      else { s/\{(\s*)/"{$1" . q("hooks": true,) . ($1 || " ")/e }
    ' "$f"
  else
    mkdir -p ~/.sessionkit/mail/settings
    echo '{"version": 1, "hooks": true, "sendmail": "drop"}' > "$f"
  fi
  

  A "hooks": false becomes true. A file with no hooks key gets "hooks": true as its first key, and its other keys stay as they were. If the file is not there yet, this writes what the plugin would have written, with the hooks on. The plugin never replaces a file that is already there.

Step by step, with every step that needs you marked: the manual install.

Quick start

sessionkit --version

It lists the kit and each family package, with its version:

sessionkit, version 0.3.0
  sessionmail   0.3.0
  sessiontools  0.3.0
  sessionphone  0.3.0
  sessionview   0.3.0
  sessionvoice  0.3.0

Start Claude in a project folder, not in your home folder, where a new Terminal opens. Started in the home folder, Claude Code asks macOS for access to folders such as Desktop, Downloads, Photos and Media Library. Make a folder, go into it, and start Claude there:

mkdir -p ~/work && cd ~/work
session start

• The first session on this Mac is claude, and it hears Delta. Your phone's Delta messages and calls go to the box claude, and only the session that holds claude hears them. It says so as it starts:

  session start: this session is claude, the default seat on this host (box claude)
  

• A second session starts plain. Start another the same way while the first one runs, and it is a plain Claude Code session. It does not hear Delta, and its one line names the session that holds claude:

  session start: starting plain: the default seat claude is held by session 6161d8f8-d49f-4826-9f80-095bd2e6aaed (pid 6993, live 2s), so this session will NOT hear Delta messages or calls; that one does
  

• Never a bare claude. Mail to your agent's box, your phone's included, reaches only a session started as that agent.

• sessionkit setup makes the box claude first: first checks. Without the box, the first session starts plain too, and its line names the repair:

  session start: starting plain: box claude is missing, so this session will NOT hear Delta messages or calls; repair: message setup --box claude
  

Then, from your agent inside a Claude Code session, list your live sessions:

session list

Mail another agent, its box name in place of TO:

message send TO -s "PR ready" -f note.md

Speak one line:

mouth say "the build is green"

• Mail works inside a session. message and pager read who is asking from the session. A plain terminal has no session, so they refuse with no seat in the environment ... set an identity (first checks). A send never makes a box: the address must have one already (mail between agents).

• The mouth plays on your Mac's default output when no device is set. mouth devices lists the others, and --device DEVICE picks one.

• To hear you, the ears need a speech-to-text server: hearing and speaking.

• Your agent talks with the kit's mouth and ears. sessionvoice's ears skill sets the default:

  With the kit, an agent talks through the kit's own mouth and ears: it speaks with mouth say and listens by arming the ears with ears-arm. That is the default whenever the user asks it to talk, speak, listen or use voice, even on a host that also has VoiceMode's converse tool. It uses converse only when the user asks for converse by name.

Requirements

• macOS (tested on macOS 27, Apple silicon)
• Linux
• WSL
• Windows

What the kit depends on, what needs each one, and how to upgrade it: dependencies.

Uninstall

claude plugin marketplace remove sessionkit
uv tool uninstall sessionkit

Removing the marketplace removes its six plugins too, but not the copies they ran from. Those copies, the services and your data have their own steps: uninstall.

Usage

Every command answers --help, and each has a page: components.

The family

Session Kit installs these together:

• sessionmail: mail for coding agents. message, pager and memory over one maildir.
• sessiontools: sessions, status and idle. session.
• sessionvoice: ambient voice. ears hears; mouth speaks.
• sessionphone: phone calls to a session over Delta Chat. Installed, and walked on a fresh Mac for a session started with session start <name>. A plain claude session does not hear calls you make to it yet.
• sessionview: a tmux sidebar of your projects and your agents.

Components

The commands, services and folders the install adds, and where each package logs: components.

Configuration

Each package configures itself: configuration. How the settings files stack: the settings guide.

Logs

Each package keeps its own log: logs. Which one to read for a symptom: troubleshooting.

Development

git clone https://github.com/sessionkit/sessionkit
cd sessionkit
make install
make check

make install installs the kit editable, with uv. make check runs ruff, shellcheck, then the tests.

The rules for changing the kit: AGENTS.md.

Status

Alpha, 0.3.1. Tested on macOS 27 on Apple silicon; Linux and Windows are untested. What you may still hit: known gaps.

Licence: AGPL-3.0.