Arcade — task boards, notes, team chats and games inside Claude Code

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Beta (0.36). Everything described here works and is used every day; what changes from now on is mostly the details. Bug reports are very welcome — see Feedback.

Arcade is a plugin for Claude Code that turns it into a small workspace: project boards where any card goes to Claude with one button, a notebook Claude keeps with you, shared by all your open sessions, and shared boards and chats for your team. And for the wait: when the agent has been busy for more than 10 seconds, a small “play?” appears above the prompt. Play a game — NES, Sega, PlayStation, Doom, chess and more — read a book, listen to an audiobook or a podcast, or watch a video on the topic of the agent's work. Arcade tells you the moment the agent finishes or needs your permission, so you never miss it.

Everything in the catalog is free: the games are openly licensed, the books and audiobooks are in the public domain. You can also play online with other people who are waiting for their agents too, and chat with your friends.

While the agent works: 31 seconds in Claude Desktop. Watch the 720p video.

Features

• Notebook and project boards. Pages, subpages and checklists that Claude keeps too, and boards with columns and cards. Give to Claude hands a page or a card to Claude: it ticks off what's done and writes the result there. All your open Claude Code sessions share the notebook, so each one can take its own card from the same board. Share a board with friends, and everyone works on the same board. Send a page to Notion or another app, or bring one in, through Claude's connectors; dictate into Claude's prompt box and move the text onto a page.
• Friends and chats. An optional GitHub sign-in keeps your settings the same on all your computers and gives you an @handle; add friends by their exact handle, see who is online, share boards, invite them to a game, and chat one-on-one or in groups.
• Knows what the agent is doing. When the agent finishes or asks for permission, you get a banner over the game — keep playing, pause, or jump straight back to the agent (you choose the behaviour in settings). In Claude Desktop it can also close the tab you're watching, so the conversation is back in front of you.
• Appears on its own. After 10 seconds of agent work, Arcade offers a game above the prompt — or later, or never, as you choose in the settings; it never steals focus unless you ask it to.
• One menu, six sections. Play, Read & listen, Watch, Social, Work and More — fold the ones you don't need. On top: Continue the last game, Search and Favorites. The first time you open Arcade, you choose which sections to show.
• 61 free games across NES (Dendy), Sega Mega Drive, Master System, PlayStation and a Games tab with arcade games, shooters, racing, strategy, adventures and board games.
• Read and listen. Classic books and LibriVox audiobooks in 30 languages, straight from Project Gutenberg, Wikisource and LibriVox, plus fresh articles and podcast episodes on the topic of the agent's work.
• Watch. Fresh YouTube videos on the topic of the agent's work, Twitch: your own channels and live streams about coding, tech, science and retro games, and TikTok: the For You feed and search on TikTok's own site, where you sign in yourself.
• NES and Flappy Arcade right inside Claude Code — in the terminal, VS Code and Claude Desktop. Everything else opens in a browser window — in Claude Desktop, in Claude's built-in browser by default (shooters still open in a browser window: the built-in browser can't capture the mouse).
• Online play. Two-player console games over the network, Doom deathmatch and co-op, chess, Go, draughts and reversi against people or the computer.
• “Who's waiting online”. Arcade shows in Claude Code when someone is waiting for a partner, with a Join button.
• Search and favorites. One search across games and Twitch channels, grouped by section and genre; mark a game with ☆ to keep it in ★ Favorites.
• Your own games. Add ROMs you own; they stay on your machine.
• 13 interface languages: English, Русский, Українська, Español, Français, Deutsch, Português, Italiano, Polski, Türkçe, 日本語, 中文, 한국어 — picked from your system or browser, English by default.

Install

Requires Claude Code 2.1.275 or newer.

In a terminal — two commands: add Arcade's marketplace (this repository), then install the plugin from it:

claude plugin marketplace add ArbakovMaxim/agent-arcade
claude plugin install arcade@agent-arcade

Or inside a Claude Code session:

/plugin marketplace add ArbakovMaxim/agent-arcade
/plugin install arcade@agent-arcade

The plugin is installed for all sessions and apps. The VS Code extension has no /plugin command — install from a terminal, and the extension picks the plugin up in a new conversation.

Update:

/plugin marketplace update agent-arcade
/plugin update arcade@agent-arcade

Then restart Claude Code. The marketplace downloads only the plugin — a few MiB, without the site — so updating takes seconds. If Arcade is already installed, there's nothing to do: the marketplace switches over by itself on the next update.

If /plugin update says already at the latest version but a newer Arcade is out, the marketplace didn't refresh. Run claude plugin marketplace update agent-arcade in a terminal to see why. If it says timed out, give the clone 10 minutes:

CLAUDE_CODE_PLUGIN_GIT_TIMEOUT_MS=600000 claude plugin marketplace update agent-arcade

In PowerShell: $env:CLAUDE_CODE_PLUGIN_GIT_TIMEOUT_MS=600000; claude plugin marketplace update agent-arcade. Then run /plugin update arcade@agent-arcade again.

Uninstall: /plugin uninstall arcade@agent-arcade

How to use

• /arcade opens the menu at any time.
• When the agent works for more than 10 seconds, “play?” appears above the prompt: 1 — play here, in the panel; 2 — in a browser window (where available); 3 — not now. In Settings → Notifications you can choose when it appears — from 10 seconds to 5 minutes — or turn it off.
• Arrow keys or Tab to choose, Enter to open; the mouse works too. Game controls are shown under each game.
• When the agent finishes or waits for permission, a banner appears over the game: Back to agent or Keep playing.

The menu

Press a section's title to fold or unfold it. A folded section shows ▸ and how many tiles it holds, and Social also shows new messages 💬 and friend requests 👥. Arcade remembers which sections you folded. A section you don't need can be hidden in Settings: it is gone from the menu entirely, title and tiles; More, which holds the settings, always stays. Signed in, the menu header shows your @handle with the same counters.

Search starts from two letters and matches a title or a genre, ignoring case and accents. Results are grouped by section and genre, like Games · Shooter. The ☆ star next to a game adds it to ★ Favorites (up to 100), laid out by section and genre with the latest first. Books and audiobooks have their own search by title or author.

Where things open

The browser window is a separate Arcade window (your default browser or the one you pick in settings), not a tab in your everyday browsing. Chats work right in the panel in the terminal and in Desktop; Open as a page opens them on the site the same way. The notebook and project boards live in the panel. TikTok opens in Claude's built-in browser in Desktop and in your default browser elsewhere, where you are likely signed in already.

The catalog

Each game's card links to its license and source code.

Topics. Articles, Podcasts and YouTube start with topics: Haiku suggests three about what the agent is working on, plus Launches and keynotes. Under Your own topic you can type what you want to watch, read or listen to, in any language; your last five topics stay as My topics tiles.

Online play

• Consoles. Two-player games on NES, Sega, Master System and PlayStation have an Online button: create a room or join someone's. Inputs are synchronised frame by frame through Arcade's server.
• Doom. FreeDM and BlasphDM are deathmatch lobbies with 5-minute rounds for up to four players; Freedoom and Blasphemer have co-op via Online. Newcomers wait for the next round — the engine doesn't allow joining a match in progress.
• Board games. Find an opponent, Invite a friend by link, or Against the computer. The game is stored on the server: make a move, go back to your agent, open the link later — the board is where you left it. Signed in with an @handle, your opponent sees it next to your colour.
• Who's waiting. Once a minute Arcade checks whether anyone is waiting for a partner and shows it in Claude Code — for example “play? Waiting online: FreeDM (1)” — with a Join button in the menu.

Account, friends and chats

Signing in is optional — without it everything else works as before.

• Sign in with GitHub (in Social): GitHub’s sign-in page opens in your regular browser; confirm there, then press Sign in on Arcade’s page — its code should match the one in the panel. If signing in through the browser doesn’t work, use Sign in with a code: Arcade shows a code, you enter it on GitHub’s page. Arcade learns only your GitHub profile name and picture — no email, no access to repositories.
• Sync. Your language, keys, notifications, panel size, what to do with the game when the agent signals, the Desktop browser options, your topics, Twitch channels, favorites, folded and hidden sections and Flappy Arcade best become the same on all your computers. Your own games, the browser and the graphics mode stay per computer.
• @handle. Take your GitHub name in one click or make up your own: 4 to 32 characters — Latin letters, digits and _. You can change it up to 5 times a day.
• Friends. Add a friend by their exact @handle: they accept the request on their side, and you appear in each other's lists. There are no suggestions as you type, so nobody can browse who is on Arcade. Declining and removing are silent.
• Online and game invitations. While the Arcade menu is open, your friends see you as online, and you see them; to stay unseen, turn off Show friends that I am online on the Friends screen. Invite next to a friend offers the online games: a board game opens a private room for two, a Doom game its lobby. The game opens for you at once; your friend gets a notification and Accept at the top of the menu, and the invitation is valid for 10 minutes. You can invite where online games open in a browser — the built-in one in Desktop or a browser window.
• Chats. One-on-one with a friend, groups of friends, or a group with all your friends in one press. Write right in the Arcade panel or open the chats page on the site. Your own message can be edited or deleted from the ⋮ menu next to it; on the site, a right click opens the same menu. Messages are stored on Arcade's site and are not encrypted — don't write passwords or keys there.
• Avatars and message notifications. Pick one of 24 ready-made avatars in Account — chats only show it; without one, the first letter of your @handle. A group’s owner picks its picture from the same 24. Your GitHub picture is never shown to others. When a friend writes, a card pops up in the bottom left on top of all windows (Windows) or a system notification appears (macOS, Linux); a click on the card opens that chat.
• Sign out stops syncing on this computer; Delete account (press twice) makes the site forget you and your settings.

Notebook and project boards

Both are in the Work section of the menu.

• Notebook. Pages and subpages; a line starting with # is a heading, - an item, - [ ] a checklist item that ticks with a press. It is kept on this computer — up to 200 pages, 20,000 characters on a page.
• Claude keeps it too. Give to Claude passes a page to Claude, or just ask Claude to write something down in Arcade. Claude uses the mcp__arcade__notes tool, which changes only the notebook and deletes nothing. If you don't like Claude's edit, Restore the text from before Claude's edit.
• Notion and other apps — through Claude's connectors, so Arcade needs no keys or passwords: Send to Notion, To another app, Import from Notion or another app. A linked page can be updated in the app or imported again from it.
• Voice. Dictate into Claude's prompt box with the system's own dictation (Win+H on Windows, Fn twice on macOS), then press Take from Claude's prompt box — the text moves to the end of the page.
• Project board. Columns — To do, Doing, Done or your own, up to 8 — and cards; a card is a notebook page with text and a checklist. Press a card to pick it and move it with the arrows, press again to open it. Claude can run a board too: Give to Claude, or ask it to lay out tasks on a board in Arcade.
• Shared boards. Signed in with a @handle, tick friends and press Share: everyone has the same cards, columns and name, and changes show up within seconds. The owner invites more friends, removes people and deletes the board from the site; anyone can leave; whatever happens, everyone keeps their own copy. Up to 3 shared boards of your own, 20 people and 200 cards on a board.
• Several sessions at once. All open Claude Code sessions on this computer share one notebook and its boards: what one session adds, edits or ticks off, the others see within a few seconds, so each session can work on its own card of the same board.

Your own games

• /arcade-add <file> adds a NES, Mega Drive or Master System ROM (up to 4 MB). The plugin keeps a copy in ~/.claude/arcade and never uploads it.
• PlayStation discs and Doom WADs (for example a doom.wad you own) — in the Arcade window: Open your own file. They stay in that browser only.

Only add files you have the rights to.

Settings

Open Settings in the More section of the /arcade menu:

• Main menu sections — show or hide any section except More; a hidden section is gone from the menu entirely until you bring it back here. The same choice is offered the first time you open Arcade.
• Language — one of 13 (also right in the menu: 🌐).
• Open games — here in the panel, in a browser window, or in a specific browser; in Claude Desktop — in Claude's built-in browser or in a browser window.
• Graphics (terminal) — pixels in terminals that show images (kitty, Ghostty, Rio), text blocks everywhere.
• Panel size — normal or full width.
• When the agent finishes — banner and keep playing, pause with a banner, or straight back to the agent.
• When the agent asks for permission — the same three options.
• When the browser opens (Claude Desktop) — close the Arcade menu so the browser gets the full height, or keep the menu above it.
• Agent finished while you watch (Claude Desktop) — close the tab Arcade opened for a video, a stream, TikTok, an article or an episode, so the chat with Claude is in front of you again, or just let you know.
• Notifications while playing in the window.
• Message notifications — a card in the bottom left when a friend writes in a chat (a system notification on macOS and Linux).
• Key test and key remapping (terminal).
• Terms and privacy — the site's Terms of Use and Privacy Policy, opened in your usual browser.

What the plugin does on your computer

Arcade runs inside Claude Code with the access Claude Code gives plugins. All of its code is in this repository, and claude plugin validate ./mod lists every event it hooks and every call it makes. In short:

• The agent's tools. Arcade sees when a tool starts and finishes and when the agent asks for permission — that's how it knows when to show its banner. It never changes or blocks the agent's tool calls. It approves only two kinds of calls itself, and only where Claude Code would otherwise ask you: mcp__arcade__notes, which changes only the notebook and deletes nothing, and opening a game in Desktop's built-in browser after you press it in the panel. Your allow and deny rules apply as they are.
• Interrupting the agent. Only in Claude Desktop, when you open something in the built-in browser while the agent is working: Desktop doesn't let a plugin open the browser by itself. Arcade waits for the current tool to finish (after 10 seconds it cuts it off, but it waits as long as a permission prompt is on screen), interrupts the agent and asks Claude to open the page and get back to work. To avoid this, choose a browser window in Settings → Open games.
• Your conversation. For topics, Haiku in your own session gets the end of the conversation, a few thousand characters; this counts toward your Claude usage. Arcade's site never sees the conversation. Arcade types into the prompt box or submits it only when you ask — for example Give to Claude in the notebook — or to open a page as described above.
• Programs it runs. Your browser for the Arcade window (on Windows with its own profile in %LOCALAPPDATA%\claude-arcade); notifications — PowerShell on Windows, osascript on macOS, notify-send on Linux; a check of which browsers are installed (Windows) or which OS this is (uname).
• Files. It writes only the ROMs you add with /arcade-add, into ~/.claude/arcade/roms, and reads only the file you name, those copies and its own files. Settings, the notebook and favorites live in Claude Code's plugin storage.
• Environment variables. It reads HOME or USERPROFILE, LANG, LC_ALL, LC_MESSAGES, LOCALAPPDATA and OS, and changes none.
• Network. The plugin itself talks only to Arcade's site (agent-arcade.fefaodessa.workers.dev), the RSS feeds of YouTube channels and the feeds of the blogs and podcasts it shows. Pictures in the Desktop panel, such as Twitch avatars, load straight from those services. Games, books and videos are loaded by the page you open in the browser.

Privacy

The site's Privacy Policy and Terms of Use have the details; in the plugin they are under Settings → Terms and privacy. In short:

• No ads, no analytics, no tracking. Games that came with analytics had it removed (see each game's NOTICE).
• Your own ROMs, WADs, books and audiobook files never leave your machine or browser.
• Book and audiobook lists and Project Gutenberg books come through Arcade's site, which fetches them from Project Gutenberg, Wikisource and archive.org and keeps them only in Cloudflare's cache — lists for six hours, a book for a week. Wikisource pages and LibriVox recordings the window loads straight from those sites.
• Online play goes through Arcade's server on Cloudflare: messages are relayed between players in a room and not stored — except moves of board games, which are kept so you can come back; a game untouched for a month is deleted.
• Topics are suggested by Haiku in your own Claude Code session; Arcade's site never sees your conversation — only a short English search query when you use Your own topic. An article's address goes after #, so it never reaches Arcade's server.
• A search for Your own topic goes through YouTube API Services, and videos play in YouTube's own player, so the YouTube Terms of Service and the Google Privacy Policy apply too. Haiku in your own session picks up to six videos from their titles and short descriptions; Arcade's site keeps search results in a shared cache for a day.
• Signed in, the site keeps your synced settings, favorites, @handle, friends, chats and shared boards, and game invitations for 10 minutes. Who is online it holds only in memory, for a minute and a half. The session key goes only to Arcade's site.
• The notebook stays on your computer. Shared boards are stored on Arcade's site and are not encrypted, like chats. Pages go to Notion or another app only when you ask, through your own Claude connectors.
• A bug report carries your text, the Arcade version, where it is open, the interface language and the OS — nothing else; without signing in it goes unsigned, and the site keeps no address.
• Some games can reach the internet only when you ask them to — for example OpenTTD's optional survey and its Online Content button.

Platforms and status

Arcade is in beta: the features are in place, and work goes on in the details — see the changelog.

• Checked live on Windows, macOS and Linux.
• Works in the terminal, in VS Code and in Claude Desktop.

Licenses

• Games: every game has its own free license (MIT, GPL, BSD, Apache, Creative Commons and others) — the license text and source live next to the game and are linked from its card.
• Books and audiobooks: public domain; Arcade does not store them — books come from Project Gutenberg and Wikisource, recordings from LibriVox (archive.org), at the moment you open them.
• Emulators and engines: JSNES (Apache-2.0), EmulatorJS (GPL-3.0) with its cores, PrBoom (GPL-2.0), doom-wasm by Cloudflare and Chocolate Doom/Heretic (GPL-2.0), OpenTTD (GPL-2.0), micropolisJS (GPL-3.0 with additional terms), ScummVM (GPL-3.0-or-later), Stockfish (GPL-3.0) — the chess computer. The Genesis Plus GX core used for Sega and Master System is for non-commercial use only.
• Arcade's own code (the plugin and the site) — GNU AGPL-3.0 (LICENSE), © 2026 Max Arbakov. You are free to use, study and change it. If you distribute a modified version — or run it as an online service for other people — you must publish your full source code under the same license and keep the copyright notices. Third-party components keep their own licenses.

Support the project

Arcade is free. If it makes your waits more fun, you can buy the project a coffee — entirely voluntary: ko-fi.com/agentarcade. The same link is at the bottom of the /arcade menu (☕ Support the project) and in the Arcade window. Nothing in Arcade depends on it, and it never interrupts a game.

Feedback

Found a bug? The quickest way is right in Arcade: More → 🐞 Report a bug. Describe what broke, and the report goes straight to the author of Arcade with the version, the surface, the language and the OS.

You can also open an issue — for bugs and for ideas. Please mention your OS, your Claude Code surface (terminal, VS Code or Desktop) and the game.

Pull requests are welcome. By sending one you agree that your contribution is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and that the author may also offer Arcade under other terms (for example, a commercial license).

For developers

mod/     the Claude Code plugin (hooks, panel UI, tests)
site/    the website on Cloudflare Workers: catalog, Arcade window, network rooms, accounts, friends, chats, bug reports
tools/   build helpers: translations, heretic-wasm
.github/ GitHub Actions that build doom-wasm, heretic-wasm, OpenTTD and ScummVM for the browser

• Run the plugin from the repository: claude --plugin-dir ./mod
• Plugin tests: claude plugin validate ./mod, then claude plugin test in mod/
• Site tests: npm test in site/; build: node build.mjs; deploy happens automatically from main via Cloudflare Workers Builds.
• Work happens in main, and pull requests go there too. The default branch plugin is a copy of main without site/ that a GitHub Action updates on every push: the plugin marketplace downloads it instead of the whole repository.
• Translations: node tools/i18n/collect.mjs, then node tools/i18n/check.mjs — see tools/i18n/README.md.

Detailed documentation (in Russian): mod/README.md — the plugin, site/README.md — the site, adding games and network play.