harmonica-chat

A conversational Harmonica companion for Claude Code that helps you design, create, and manage deliberation sessions.

Harmonica is a structured deliberation platform where groups coordinate through AI-facilitated async conversations. You create a session with a topic and goal, share a link with participants, and each person has a private 1:1 conversation with an AI facilitator. Responses are then synthesized into actionable insights. Learn more.

Unlike a simple session creator, harmonica-chat is a guided session designer. It walks you through template selection, goal refinement, and context calibration — then handles the full session lifecycle from creation through follow-up.

Prerequisites

harmonica-chat requires the harmonica-mcp server to be installed. If it's not set up, the command will guide you through installation automatically.

To install manually:

1. Get a Harmonica account — Sign up free if you don't have one.
2. Generate an API key — Go to Profile > API Keys > Generate API Key. Copy the hm_live_... key.
3. Install the MCP server (replace with your actual key):

   claude mcp add-json harmonica '{"command":"npx","args":["-y","harmonica-mcp"],"env":{"HARMONICA_API_KEY":"hm_live_..."}}' -s user
   

4. Restart Claude Code to load the new MCP server.

Installation

Quick Install (bash)

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/harmonicabot/harmonica-chat/main/install.sh | bash

Quick Install (PowerShell)

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/harmonicabot/harmonica-chat/main/install.ps1 | iex

Manual Installation

Copy harmonica-chat.md to ~/.claude/commands/harmonica-chat.md

Updating

The command checks for updates automatically on each run and will suggest updating if a newer version is available. You can also update manually with the same install command.

Usage

Guided session design

/harmonica-chat

Walks you through the full design flow: intent, template matching, topic, goal, context, critical question, and cross-pollination. Each question is asked one at a time.

Accelerated creation

/harmonica-chat "Q1 retrospective"

Provide a topic upfront to skip the intent and topic questions. The command suggests a template based on your topic and moves through the remaining steps faster.

Project-aware creation

/harmonica-chat "retro on the API redesign" --project harmonica-web-app

Reads the project's CLAUDE.md and recent git history to auto-generate session context. Suggests a session type based on recent activity patterns.

Session lifecycle

/harmonica-chat status                    # List your recent sessions
/harmonica-chat check "Q1 retro"          # Check participant progress and themes
/harmonica-chat summary "Q1 retro"        # Get the AI-generated synthesis
/harmonica-chat follow-up "Q1 retro"      # Design a follow-up session

Features

• Guided session design with template matching across 9 templates (Retrospective, Brainstorming, SWOT, Theory of Change, OKRs, Action Planning, Community Policy, Weekly Check-ins, Risk Assessment)
• Session design expertise — goal quality nudges, context calibration, cross-pollination recommendations
• Project-aware context — reads CLAUDE.md and git history to auto-fill session context
• Full session lifecycle — status, check, summary, and follow-up commands
• Invitation drafting with tone adapted to session type, plus integration with communication tools (Zapier, Slack) when available
• Community participation feed integration for publishing sessions to community dashboards

See Also

• harmonica-mcp — MCP server for full API access to Harmonica sessions
• Harmonica docs — Platform documentation
• Harmonica — Main website

License

MIT