VibeSense

Drive Claude Code with a game controller — and play retro games while the agent works.

vibesense wraps the claude CLI in a pty and passes its TUI through to your terminal untouched. A game controller (Xbox / DualSense / generic HID) drives everything:

• Agent waiting on you? D-pad navigates AskUserQuestion options, A/✕ accepts, B/○ cancels, Y/△ triggers Claude Code's native voice input, right stick scrolls.
• Agent executing? A retro alien-defenders game auto-starts in a browser tab — left stick moves, RT/R2 fires. The moment Claude stops or asks a question, the game pauses and the controller flips back to driving the terminal.
• Want a break? Menu/Options pauses the game and hands the controller to the terminal; press it again to resume. This manual pause sticks — the agent starting or stopping won't un-pause it.
• Games are plugins. Anyone can publish a game as an npm package (vibesense-game-<id>); install with vibesense install <id>.

How it works

controller (node-hid)                                  ← one host per machine
   │
input router ──(agent waiting/idle)──▶ keystrokes ──▶ node-pty ⇄ claude
   │
   └────────(agent executing)──▶ SSE ──▶ browser tab (game canvas)

Claude Code hooks (curl POST) ──▶ http://127.0.0.1:48753 ──▶ agent-state FSM

Agent state comes from Claude Code hooks (UserPromptSubmit, Stop, Notification, PermissionRequest, PreToolUse:AskUserQuestion) installed idempotently into ~/.claude/settings.json. Multiple Claude sessions share one host, one controller, and one game — the game pauses whenever any session needs your attention.

Terminal buttons and game buttons are disjoint sets, with a 750 ms input guard on every mode flip — mashing fire can never accidentally accept a question.

Games marketplace

vibesense games            # list installed games (* = active)
vibesense install <id>     # install vibesense-game-<id> from npm (tarballs/paths work too)
vibesense use <id>         # switch the active game
vibesense uninstall <id>

A game is an npm package vibesense-game-<id> with a vibesense-game.json manifest — either a web game (canvas page served to the game tab) or an external adapter (shell commands on state transitions, e.g. launching/pausing a Steam game). See docs/plugin-contract.md to build one. Paid games are a reserved manifest field (entitlement) with the activation gate already in place — licensing bolts on later without changing the contract.

Trust model: installing a game is installing an npm package, and external games run shell commands by design. Only install games from authors you trust — same judgement as adding any dependency.

Install

npm install -g vibesense    # or: npx vibesense

Requires Node ≥22, and is macOS-first. The native deps node-hid / node-pty compile on install, so you'll need build tools (Xcode Command Line Tools on macOS).

Development

npm install
npm run dev        # run from source (tsx)
npm run verify     # typecheck + lint + format-check + tests