Houston (formerly AI Command Center) is a Windows desktop app: a browser, PowerShell terminals and your project folders in one window.
An agent (Claude Code, or Claude in the sidebar) can drive it, and runs nothing without your click.
[!TIP]
Try the demo in any browser. Made-up data; nothing runs or calls out.
[!WARNING]
Chrome extensions mostly work: LastPass and Rakuten do, MV3 ad blockers don't. Details.
✨ Features
| Part | What it does |
|---|
| 🌐 Browser | Tabs, extensions, built-in ad blocking |
| 💻 Terminals | PowerShell 7, Windows PowerShell, Command Prompt or Git Bash, in tabs |
| 🧭 Workspaces | A folder with its own tabs, terminals and chat |
| ⚡ Command palette | Ctrl+K: actions, tabs, terminals, workspaces and files in one box |
| 📁 Files | Every project from Project Hub, opened in a tab |
| 🔖 Bookmarks · 🕘 Recent · 🔍 Search | Your browser's bookmarks, what you opened, one search over all of it |
| 🤖 MCP server | Sixteen tools so Claude Code can see and act in the window, a tab you attach included, and what it asked to run and how that went |
| 💬 Chat | Claude in a pane on the right, with the same tools; named, searchable conversations per workspace |
| ⏱️ Cron | Cronsole's scheduled tasks and their runs |
| 🌿 Git | The workspace repo's branch and changed files, each diff a click away (read-only) |
| 🚀 Dev | Start, open, restart and stop the workspace's npm run dev style servers, with their logs |
| 🔌 Connections | Hub, Cronsole, shells, chat and MCP: working or not, and what to set |
The full tour is in features.md.
🚀 Quick start
Needs Windows 11, Node.js 24, PowerShell 7 and a running Project Hub.
git clone https://github.com/ai-automation-tools/houston
cd houston
npm install
npm start
| Next | Where |
|---|
Launcher, settings.json, where files live | setup.md |
| Set up the MCP server in any client | mcp-server.md |
| Connect Claude Code | claude-code.md |
| Turn on the Chat tab | chat.md |
| Show Cronsole's tasks | cronsole.md |
| Put two agents in a debate, a podcast or a collaboration | Roundtable: its web page in a browser tab, each agent's CLI in a terminal tab |
⌨️ Shortcuts
| Keys | Does |
|---|
| Ctrl+K | Command palette |
| Ctrl+T / Ctrl+W / Ctrl+Shift+T | New tab / close tab / reopen tab |
| Ctrl+Tab / Ctrl+1 … 9 | Next tab / that tab |
| Alt+D | Address bar |
| Ctrl+F | Find in page |
| Ctrl+plus / minus / 0 | Zoom |
| Ctrl+` / Ctrl+Shift+` | Toggle terminal / new terminal |
| Ctrl+Shift+F | Search everything |
| Ctrl+B | Toggle sidebar |
| Ctrl+Shift+L | Toggle chat |
| F12 / Ctrl+Shift+I | Page devtools / shell devtools |
🧪 Checks
npm run lint; npm test; npm run smoke
How to contribute: contributing.md.
🗂️ What's in here
| Folder | What's inside |
|---|
| 📖 docs/guide/ | How to set up and use the app |
| 📚 docs/ | Roadmap, changelog, design decisions, architecture diagram |
| 🧩 src/ | The app's code |
| 🧪 tests/ | Unit tests and the scripted launch check |
| 📜 scripts/ | Smoke run, lint, demo build, diagram build, launcher |
| 🤖 AGENTS.md | Rules for agents working in this repo (CLAUDE.md imports it) |
| 🛡️ SECURITY.md | Reporting a vulnerability; the full model is in security-model.md |
⚖️ Licence
GPL-3.0-or-later, because the Chrome extension library is GPL. See LICENSE and ADR-001.
