Claude Panel

Claude Code gets its own screen — it decides what you need to see

Panel cycling through main, status, and ambient screens

Main screen (Claude's content) → Status dashboard → Ambient screensaver

Claude Panel is a persistent TUI that sits next to your Claude Code terminal. Claude autonomously updates the panel with whatever it thinks matters — code it just wrote, a diagram, next steps, or a mood emoji. A structured dashboard tracks the current task, files changed, and key decisions, refreshing after every response. And when you're between tasks, ambient terminal screensavers keep the vibe going.

Three Screens

Screen	Managed by	What it shows
Main	Claude	Whatever Claude thinks is useful right now — code snippets, explanations, diagrams, progress checklists, mood emoji. Full creative control.
Status	Claude (AI curator)	Structured dashboard: current task, files changed, decisions made. Auto-updates after every response.
Ambient	You	Terminal screensaver of your choice. Plays when nothing else needs your attention.

Claude manages the content, you manage the screensaver. The main and status screens update automatically — Claude reads the conversation, decides what's worth pinning on screen, and writes it. No manual commands needed.

Ambient Screensavers

Twelve built-in terminal animations ship with the package. Navigate with arrow keys or panel(show="ambient").

aurora screensaver

aurora

tokyo-drift screensaver

tokyo-drift

All screensavers are bundled with the package — they work out of the box on a fresh install.

Custom screensavers

Drop a .py file in ~/.claude-panel/screensavers/ and it becomes available immediately. User screensavers override bundled ones of the same name, so you can customize any built-in screensaver without touching the package.

# List available screensavers
panel(screensaver="rain-city")

# Or ask Claude to create one
# "make me a screensaver with falling snow"

Screensavers are plain Python scripts that draw to a Rich canvas. Creating your own takes ~10 lines.

Install

# As a Claude Code plugin (recommended)
claude plugin marketplace add alex-radaev/claude-panel
claude plugin install claude-panel@claude-panel

Manual installation

git clone https://github.com/alex-radaev/claude-panel
cd claude-panel
uv sync

Then add to your MCP config (~/.claude/settings.json or .mcp.json).

Usage

The panel opens automatically when you start a Claude Code session — an iTerm2 (macOS) or Windows Terminal (WSL) split pane launches with the viewer. No manual commands needed.

To disable auto-open, set "auto_open": false in ~/.claude-panel/config.json.

You can also open it manually:

# From Claude Code
panel_open()

# Manual
uv run claude-panel

Once running, Claude takes over. The main and status screens update on their own. You can switch views:

panel(show="ambient")              # switch to screensaver
panel(show="main")                 # switch to main canvas
panel(show="status")               # switch to status dashboard
panel(screensaver="tokyo-drift")   # change screensaver

Key	Action
`q`	Quit viewer
`<-` `->`	Cycle screens
`c`	Clear panel

iTerm2 tip: The panel pane may look washed out because iTerm2 dims inactive split panes by default. To fix: Settings > Appearance > Dimming and uncheck Dim inactive split panes.

How It Works

 Claude Code session              iTerm2 Split Pane
┌──────────────────────┐         ┌──────────────────┐
│                      │         │                  │
│  Main Claude         │         │  Textual TUI     │
│  + Background agents │         │  Viewer          │
│  + Stop hook curator │         │                  │
│                      │         │                  │
└──────────┬───────────┘         └────────┬─────────┘
           │  WRITES                      │ POLLS
           └──────►  per-session   ◄──────┘
                     state.json
            ~/.claude-panel/sessions/<id>/

Claude responds — a Stop hook runs the AI curator (Haiku). It reads the conversation, decides what changed, and updates the status screen.
Claude spawns a background agent — updates the main screen with whatever content is worth showing. Zero conversation noise.
The viewer polls the state file every 300ms and re-renders instantly.

Session isolation: Each Claude Code session gets its own state. Run multiple sessions — they don't interfere. The viewer tracks whichever session is active.

Configuration

~/.claude-panel/config.json:

{
  "auto_open": true,
  "model": "claude-haiku-4-5-20251001",
  "favorite_screensaver": "tokyo-drift",
  "update_every_n": 1,
  "curator_personality": "playful"
}

Option	Values	Description
`auto_open`	`true`, `false`	Automatically open the panel on session start (default: `true`)
`model`	Any Claude model ID	Model for the status curator (default: Haiku)
`favorite_screensaver`	Screensaver name	Default ambient screensaver
`update_every_n`	Number	Update status every N responses (1 = every time)
`curator_personality`	`"playful"`, `"professional"`	Curator tone — playful adds humor and emoji combos, professional is concise and factual

Contributing

Contributions welcome — especially new screensavers. See CONTRIBUTING.md for the full guide, including a screensaver template that gets you started in ~10 lines of Python.

License

MIT