Claude Commander

Run Claude Code with a socket API for programmatic command injection.

Features

• Full TUI: See Claude Code's interactive UI in your terminal
• Socket API: Send prompts via Unix socket / Windows named pipe
• Zero overhead: Native Rust binary, ~600KB
• Cross-platform: macOS, Linux, Windows

Installation

Download binary

Download from Releases:

# macOS (Apple Silicon)
curl -L https://github.com/sstraus/claude-commander/releases/latest/download/claudec-macos-arm64 -o claudec
chmod +x claudec

# macOS (Intel)
curl -L https://github.com/sstraus/claude-commander/releases/latest/download/claudec-macos-x64 -o claudec
chmod +x claudec

# Linux (x64)
curl -L https://github.com/sstraus/claude-commander/releases/latest/download/claudec-linux-x64 -o claudec
chmod +x claudec

# Linux (ARM64)
curl -L https://github.com/sstraus/claude-commander/releases/latest/download/claudec-linux-arm64 -o claudec
chmod +x claudec

Build from source

cargo install --git https://github.com/sstraus/claude-commander

Usage

Start Claude Commander

claudec

# With arguments for Claude Code
claudec -d /path/to/project

This will:

1. Launch Claude Code TUI
2. Detect the session ID from Claude's session file (after logo appears)
3. Start socket server at /tmp/claudec-<SESSION_ID>.sock (Unix) or \\.\pipe\claudec-<SESSION_ID> (Windows)
4. You can interact via keyboard AND socket API

Send commands

Using the Node.js client:

node client/claude-send.js send "Hello Claude"
node client/claude-send.js ping
node client/claude-send.js status

Using netcat (Unix):

# Replace <SESSION_ID> with the actual session ID shown by claudec
echo '{"action":"send","text":"Hello Claude"}' | nc -U /tmp/claudec-<SESSION_ID>.sock

Using Node.js:

const net = require('net');

function send(sessionId, cmd) {
  const sock = process.platform === 'win32'
    ? `\\\\.\\pipe\\claudec-${sessionId}`
    : `/tmp/claudec-${sessionId}.sock`;

  return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
    const c = net.createConnection(sock, () => c.write(JSON.stringify(cmd) + '\n'));
    c.on('data', d => { resolve(JSON.parse(d.toString())); c.end(); });
    c.on('error', reject);
  });
}

await send('abc123-def456', { action: 'send', text: 'Hello Claude' });

API

All commands are JSON objects, newline-delimited.

send

Send text to Claude Code.

{"action": "send", "text": "Hello Claude"}
{"action": "send", "text": "partial", "submit": false}

keys

Send raw key sequences.

{"action": "keys", "keys": "\\x0d"}

Common keys:

• \x0d - Enter
• \x03 - Ctrl+C
• \x1b - Escape
• \x1b[A - Up arrow

status

Get session status.

{"action": "status"}

Using from Claude Code Hooks

Hooks receive session info via stdin JSON. Extract session_id to build the socket path:

#!/bin/bash
# Example hook: ~/.claude/hooks/my-hook.sh

# Read hook input from stdin
INPUT=$(cat)
SESSION_ID=$(echo "$INPUT" | jq -r '.session_id')

# Build socket path
SOCKET="/tmp/claudec-${SESSION_ID}.sock"

# Send command to claudec
echo '{"action":"send","text":"Hello from hook!"}' | nc -U "$SOCKET"

The hook stdin JSON contains:

{
  "session_id": "abc123-def456-...",
  "cwd": "/path/to/project",
  ...
}

Configuration

Variable	Default	Description
CLAUDE_SOCKET	/tmp/claudec-<SESSION_ID>.sock	Override socket path
CLAUDE_CMD	claude	Claude Code command
CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR	~/.claude	Claude config directory

License

MIT