glass

A desktop-app look for Claude Code's terminal transcript, as a mod.

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/365252bf-4b60-49c3-902b-b8e127592d28

Claude Code draws replies in one markdown style: inline code in a fixed
lavender, no color for commands, tables in boxes, tool rows in gray. glass
replaces the drawing of assistant replies, tool-row headers and the turn
footer with its own, inside the same TUI. Hooks, skills, MCP, permissions
and Remote Control are untouched: it changes what is drawn, never what is
stored or what the model reads.

What it draws

• Commands in color. Inside backticks and in plain prose: command,
  subcommand, flag, string, path, operator, number, variable, each in its
  own color. In prose a command paints only with evidence (git push --follow-tags paints, make sure the build passes does not).
• Paths and links anywhere. src/main.rs:42:7 with its line number in
  the number color, README.md, .gitignore, ~/.config/app.toml. URLs
  underlined; https links are real OSC 8 links.
• A Bottom line card. A reply opening with **Bottom line** and
  Verified: / Issue: / Fix: rows becomes a tinted card with a thin
  bar and colored labels. Forms while streaming, never flickers.
• Gutter marks. A ▎ beside any paragraph that asks something of you:
  a question, an instruction, a risk, or a thing Claude did not do. Off for
  turns whose prompt asked for writing.
• Private notes. A paragraph opening with Private or Privately
  draws italic and quiet.
• Code cards. Fences on a tinted card sized to the code, a dim language
  header, a line count and gutter past eight lines. glass's own
  highlighter does the coloring, in the palette's code keys.
• Diff cards. An Edit, Write or file-changing Bash result as a rounded
  card with the file in its top border, ╭─ SPEC.md +1 -1 ───╮: one
  number column, + and - rows on a quiet tint, one context line each
  side, the code painted the same way, the frame on the tree trunk.
• Headings, lists, quotes, tables. Bold colored headings with no rules,
  • ◦ ☐ ☑ markers, a quote bar, borderless tables with aligned
  columns and right-aligned numbers.
• Turn headers. ◆ You · 1:11 PM ──── as one titled rule over your
  prompt, then ◉ Claude · 1:14 PM once the turn starts, with a dots line
  under it: one dot per tool call, grouped by tool, green, a red ✗ for a
  failure, hollow while running, then Bash ×3 · Read ×2. Once done the
  line reads 5 actions · 2 edits · 1 failed. /fold tucks finished
  trees away and /unfold opens them.
• A tool tree. While a turn runs, every call is one row: ├─ ✓ Bash git status · 3 lines with its wall time at the right, ○ while it
  runs, ✗ in red when it fails. Done commands step down to a quiet
  color, and paths draw relative to the project. Rows light under the
  pointer. The engine's folded runs name what they read: ├─ ▸ Read ×2 SPEC.md · render.ts. Bash output is painted, three lines then a count.
  A finished agent is one row.
• Background band. While subagents run, a rounded frame above the
  prompt lists them with a face, model and effort, current tool, tokens
  and the file they last touched, five at a time. The chevron folds it to
  one strip of faces.
• Event rows. A background task's notification draws as one tree row
  with its duration; a message from another agent draws as one muted row.

Every width is measured the way the engine measures cells, so emoji and
CJK in tables stay aligned.

Install

claude plugin marketplace add rashedInt32/glass
claude plugin install glass@glass

Restart Claude Code. Pick a palette with /config under Glass: tidepool
(default), water (Empryo's own proxysoul-water tokens), undertow (sampled from
Empryo's desktop video), codex or rose.
The palettes assume a dark terminal.

To try it from a clone without installing:

claude --plugin-dir /path/to/glass

Design

SPEC.md is the contract: every element, its exact tree and colors, and
the directions that were tried and rejected, with reasons. Settled through
a design panel and an investigation against how Claude Desktop, the Codex
app and T3 Code render chat.

The tidepool palette maps a neovim theme of the same name by role:
strings olive, numbers and inline code pine, commands iris, builtins foam,
paths gold, links mint.

Development

claude plugin validate .
npx tsc -p .            # after the engine has laid .claude-plugin/types
claude plugin test .    # tests/*.test.ts, run in the engine's own sandbox
grep -rnP "[^\x00-\x7F]" hooks/   # must print nothing

Every non-ASCII glyph is built from a code point in hooks/glyphs.ts.
Literals outside ASCII are forbidden in hooks/: the tool path that
writes files has dropped private-use glyphs before.

Credits

The shell tokenizer, the prose rules, the gutter-mark phrase tables and
the output painter are ported from
claude-hl, a PTY wrapper that
did the same job by reading rendered ANSI. glass reads the markdown
instead, which is why it can know a fence's language and never guesses
where a code span ends.

License

MIT