Cowait

Cowait for Claude Code. Half of working with Claude Code is waiting. Cowait is a small panel in the pane next to it that spends that time on the thing most worth doing: seeing what each Claude turn actually changed. The reward for reading is a quick game, a daily puzzle or a few flashcards.

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You type a prompt, Claude Code starts reading, editing, running tests, and you… watch the spinner. Thirty seconds, two minutes, sometimes ten. It happens dozens of times a day, and the time goes nowhere.

A wave of tools has noticed. Some turn the spinner into a game, some sell it as ad inventory, some teach you trivia in a side pane. They share one blind spot: they pull you away from the work, and most of them reward you for waiting longer, so a run that spins for twenty minutes and produces nothing still feels great.

Cowait starts from the other end. The most valuable thing you can do while Claude works is look at what it is doing: AI-written code nobody reads is the real cost of agentic coding. So after every Claude turn, the side panel lists that turn's files, titled with what you asked for. Approve with one key, or type one line ("keep the 200, the frontend depends on it") and Claude sees it on its very next step, without being interrupted. Once you are through, the same panel has three games built for waiting and flashcards, and the energy to play is earned by actually reviewing.

How it compares with Claude Code's built-in /diff, claudemon, sidequest, session monitors and others: docs/compare.md.

[!TIP] No Claude Code needed to try it: cowait demo runs a simulated Claude session so you can click through every tab. Cowait runs locally: hooks write to a log on your disk and the panel reads it; your code and diffs never leave your machine.

• Highlights
• Install
• First run
• The four tabs
• A reason to come back every day
• Two currencies
• Open source
• How it works
• Commands
• Configuration
• Privacy
• Development
• Known limitations
• License

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Highlights

Install

Needs Node.js 20 or newer:

npm install -g cowait-cli     # the command is cowait

To update later: npm install -g cowait-cli@latest. The panel looks for a new version at most once a day and tells you; so does cowait update.

dist/ is prebuilt and committed, so there is no npm install and nothing to download:

git clone https://github.com/JaspinXu/Cowait.git
cd Cowait
npm install -g .      # puts the cowait command on your PATH (or skip it and run node dist/cli.js)

To update later: cowait update --yes (a git pull in the install folder).

No Node? Use a standalone binary (Windows, macOS, Linux), one line to install:

curl -fsSL https://github.com/JaspinXu/Cowait/releases/latest/download/install.sh | sh        # macOS / Linux
irm https://github.com/JaspinXu/Cowait/releases/latest/download/install.ps1 | iex             # Windows PowerShell

The install scripts check SHA-256 sums, install into your user folder (no admin rights) and update in place when run again. Or download from Releases.

First run

Run cowait split in your project folder and the panel opens in a pane to the right of Claude Code (in other terminals, open a pane yourself and run cowait; the layout is designed for a narrow pane, 60 columns and up).

The first time, a welcome screen asks:

• Enter: hook up this project only (writes the project's .claude/settings.local.json)
• g: hook up every project (backs up ~/.claude/settings.json first)
• Esc: later; cowait install works any time

Restart Claude Code, give it a task, and the panel comes alive. cowait doctor checks everything, including a real run of the hook.

The four tabs

Tab switches tabs, m writes Claude a note, a toggles auto-switching, ? help, q quit.

Review

One group per turn, newest first. On top: the turn's title (the first line of your message), how long ago, how long it took, whether tests passed; then a row of the turn's files: ● waiting, ✓ approved, ✎ noted, · approved unread, – skipped. Several edits to one file in a turn are shown in order as "edit 1", "edit 2", …

Key	Does
y	this file is fine, next one
n	write Claude one line (it sees it on its next step)
Y	approve the whole turn: files you read count, unread ones are approved but not counted
s / S S	skip this file / press twice to skip everything
←→ [ ] ↑↓	other file / other turn / scroll the diff

When Claude finishes a turn, the panel rings and says what happened (time, files, tests, coins); Enter jumps to that turn's unread files. Changes nobody looked at for over a day are archived (counted as skipped), so the queue never becomes a guilt pile.

Play

Three games, one key per step, drop them the moment Claude is done:

以上为 README 的开头部分。其余内容请阅读原文。 查看完整 README ↗