claudectl 0.50.0

~1 MB binary. Sub-50ms startup. Zero config required.

Website | Demo | Blog: Why a local brain? | Releases

What it does for you

Run claudectl --brain-stats impact to see your numbers:

  ╔════════════════════════════════════════════════╗
  ║              IMPACT SCORECARD                  ║
  ║             1200 decisions tracked             ║
  ╠════════════════════════════════════════════════╣
  ║  Auto-handled                             71%  ║
  ║  ████████████████████░░░░░░░░  847/1200        ║
  ║                                                ║
  ║  Brain accuracy                          96.2%  ║
  ║  ███████████████████████████░  1154/1200       ║
  ║                                                ║
  ║  Coverage vs static rules               2.9x  ║
  ║  brain ████████████████████████████  100%      ║
  ║  rules █████████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░  34%      ║
  ║                                                ║
  ║  Dangerous ops blocked      12  Time saved 42m  ║
  ║  2 critical | 10 high-risk | 847 auto x 3s    ║
  ║                                                ║
  ║  Learning: correction rate 8.4% ↓ 2.1% (-6pp) ║
  ╚════════════════════════════════════════════════╝

Install

brew install mercurialsolo/tap/claudectl     # Homebrew (macOS / Linux)
cargo install claudectl                       # Cargo (any platform)

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mercurialsolo/claudectl/main/install.sh | sh
nix run github:mercurialsolo/claudectl
git clone https://github.com/mercurialsolo/claudectl.git && cd claudectl && cargo install --path .

Get started

claudectl                     # Live dashboard — see all sessions at a glance
claudectl --init              # Wire up Claude Code hooks (one-time)
claudectl --brain             # Enable local LLM auto-pilot

Why claudectl

• Local LLM auto-pilot — a brain that learns your preferences and auto-approves/denies tool calls. No cloud API.
• Hive mind — knowledge distillation, archiving, and curriculum generation. Connect instances to share learnings across machines.
• Self-improving — detects friction patterns, suggests rules, and gets smarter with every correction.
• Multi-session orchestration — run parallel tasks with dependency ordering and cross-session context routing.
• Health monitoring — catches cognitive decay, cost spikes, error loops, and context saturation before they waste money.
• Works everywhere — Claude Code plugin for inline use, TUI dashboard for oversight, CLI for automation.

Full feature comparison

Local LLM Brain

The brain observes all your sessions and makes real-time decisions:

• Approve safe tool calls automatically (reads, greps, test runs)
• Deny dangerous operations before they execute (force pushes, destructive commands)
• Terminate sessions that are looping, stalled, or burning money
• Route summarized output between sessions so they share context
• Spawn new sessions when the brain detects parallelizable work

ollama pull gemma4:e4b && ollama serve    # One-time setup
claudectl --brain                         # Advisory mode (default)
claudectl --brain --auto-run              # Auto mode: brain executes without asking
claudectl --mode auto                     # Or toggle mid-session (Ctrl+b in TUI)

Works with any OpenAI-compatible endpoint: ollama, llama.cpp, vLLM, LM Studio.

How the brain learns

The brain learns from everything you do — not just brain-involved decisions, but every manual approve, reject, rule execution, and conflict resolution. All data stays on your machine.

Self-improving sessions

The brain automatically detects friction patterns and suggests workflow improvements:

claudectl --brain --insights on     # Enable auto-generation (every 10 decisions)
claudectl --brain --insights        # View current insights

Detects: friction patterns, error loops, context blowouts, missing rules, accuracy gaps, cost trends. Only new insights are surfaced — the system tracks what you've already seen. Use /auto-insights in the Claude Code plugin.

Claude Code Plugin

Integrates the brain directly into Claude Code sessions — no TUI required.

Headless Mode

Run the full autonomous stack without a TUI. Attach a dashboard from another terminal.

claudectl --headless --brain --auto-run           # Human-readable events
claudectl --headless --brain --auto-run --json    # Structured JSON events

What runs in headless mode:

• Brain inference (approve/deny/route/spawn with adaptive confidence)
• Coordination layer (leases, interrupts, handoffs, memory)
• Context rot prevention (auto-raises compact/stop interrupts when decay detected)
• Rule evaluation and health monitoring

The TUI dashboard can run alongside -- both share state via the coordination SQLite store, brain decision logs, and session discovery.

# Background daemon
nohup claudectl --headless --brain --auto-run > ~/.claudectl/autopilot.jsonl 2>&1 &

# Attach dashboard in another terminal
claudectl

Coordination Layer

Multi-agent coordination for parallel coding sessions. Prevents duplicate work, manages ownership, and routes context between agents.

Build with cargo build --features coord to enable.

# Ownership leases — prevent two agents from editing the same file
claudectl coord claim --session sess_1 --path src/app.rs --mode exclusive
claudectl coord release lease_123

# Handoffs — structured context transfer between sessions
claudectl coord handoff --from sess_1 --to sess_2 --task task_1 --summary 'Fix path normalization'

# Interrupts — typed cross-agent signals with delivery modes
claudectl coord raise --type pause --target sess_1 --reason 'lease conflict'
claudectl coord ack intr_123

# Memory — validated patterns promoted from brain decisions
claudectl coord promote --project myproject
claudectl coord context --session sess_1           # Preview injected context

# Inspection
claudectl coord leases                             # Active ownership leases
claudectl coord interrupts                         # Pending interrupts
claudectl coord events                             # Event audit log
claudectl coord metrics                            # Coordination health metrics
claudectl coord eval                               # Run 10 eval scenarios
claudectl coord adapters                           # Registered agent adapters

The coordination layer stores state in a local SQLite database (~/.claudectl/coord/coord.db) and injects compact context into the brain's prompt before every decision.

Hive Mind & Relay

The brain distills your decisions into shareable knowledge. Connect instances across machines to build a convergent hive mind.

# Hive knowledge is built-in — view what the brain has learned
claudectl hive status
claudectl hive knowledge
claudectl hive distill                # Condense archive into curriculum

# Add relay for cross-machine networking
cargo install claudectl --features relay
claudectl relay invite                # Generate an invite code
claudectl relay join YEK-AGA-YHK-QAA-BM       # Join from another machine
claudectl relay discover              # Scan LAN for nearby instances

# Start coordinator with HTTP API for multi-machine dashboard
claudectl relay serve --http-port 9876 --auth-token secret
# Remote sessions appear in the TUI as [worker-id] project-name
# GET /api/sessions returns the unified view across all workers

Knowledge categories (best practices, techniques, workflow patterns) propagate automatically. Personal patterns (time-of-day habits, cost tolerance) stay local. You control what's shared:

[hive]
share_categories = ["best_practice", "technique"]
exclude_tools = ["Write"]
max_units = 500
max_prompt_units = 20

See the full Relay & Hive Mind guide.

Orchestrate Sessions

Run coordinated tasks with dependency ordering, retries, and cross-session data routing:

{
  "tasks": [
    { "name": "auth", "cwd": "./backend", "prompt": "Add JWT auth middleware" },
    { "name": "tests", "cwd": "./backend", "prompt": "Update API tests. Previous: {{auth.stdout}}", "depends_on": ["auth"] },
    { "name": "docs", "cwd": "./docs", "prompt": "Document the new auth flow", "depends_on": ["auth"] }
  ]
}

claudectl --run tasks.json --parallel
claudectl --decompose "Add auth, write tests, update docs"   # Auto-split into parallel tasks

Session Health Monitoring

Continuously checks each session and surfaces problems in the dashboard:

• Cognitive decay — composite 0-100 score tracking degradation over time
• Proactive compaction — suggests /compact at 50% context, before the 80/90% thresholds
• Cost spikes — flags when burn rate exceeds the session average
• Loop detection — catches tools failing repeatedly in retry loops
• Stall detection — sessions spending money but producing no edits
• File conflicts — detects when multiple sessions edit the same file

Spend Control

claudectl --budget 5 --kill-on-budget     # Auto-kill at $5
claudectl --notify                        # Desktop notifications on blocks
claudectl --stats --since 24h            # Aggregated cost statistics

Auto-Rules

[[rules]]
name = "approve-cargo"
match_tool = ["Bash"]
match_command = ["cargo"]
action = "approve"

[[rules]]
name = "deny-rm-rf"
match_command = ["rm -rf"]
action = "deny"

[[rules]]
name = "kill-runaway"
match_cost_above = 20.0
action = "terminate"

Rules support matching by tool, command, project, cost, and error state. Deny rules always take precedence.

Idle Mode

When you step away, claudectl can run pre-configured low-risk tasks. A morning report summarizes what happened.

Session Lifecycle

Auto-restart sessions on context saturation with checkpoint + summary handoff.

Record and Share

Press R on any session for a highlight reel GIF (edits, commands, errors — idle time stripped). Or claudectl --record demo.gif for the full dashboard.

Launch and Resume

claudectl --new --cwd ./backend --prompt "Add auth" or press n in the dashboard.

Filter and Search

--filter-status NeedsInput, --focus attention, --search "project", --watch for streaming.

Docs

Community

• Questions or ideas? Start a Discussion
• Found a bug? Open an issue
• Share your setup in Show & Tell

License

MIT