channel

Your favourite chat, directly in Claude Code. Read, reply, get notified and more, without leaving the terminal.

It can all be done, inside Claude Code

Install

Add the marketplace:

/plugin marketplace add jamubc/toolbox

Install the plugin:

/plugin install channel@toolbox

Usage

| Command | What it does | | --- | --- | | /channel | Opens the chat pane: a tab per service, and your twenty most recent conversations in each. |

In the pane:

• Tabs switch between services. With two or more set up, an All tab shows every conversation together.
• The list shows each conversation with a colored avatar chip, when it last moved, how many people are in it, and its newest message. Unread chats are marked and counted; keys 1 to 9 open the first nine.
• A conversation shows messages under the day they came, each person in their own color (you in cyan), with files, the message a reply answers, reactions, and edited or unsent messages. ↑ older pages back through the history; ↓ latest returns to the end.
• Pictures (and the first page of a PDF) preview inline in the terminal: as real pixels in kitty and Ghostty, as colored blocks elsewhere. A terminal that turns out not to draw pixels falls back to blocks by itself. /config → How picture previews are drawn forces one, or turns previews off.
• → Claude on a file puts its path in your Claude prompt, ready for you to send. copy path copies it, and pressing the file name opens it with your Mac's own app.
• attach sends a file: pick one this Claude session touched, type a path, or drag a file onto the field.
• Claude's reply puts Claude's last answer in the reply box for you to edit and send.
• ↪ new in … jumps to the conversation that last notified you, and ↩ back to … returns you.

Notifications stay quiet: only one of your Claude sessions toasts, several messages in one chat fold into one toast, and a chat toasts at most once every 10 seconds. Every session still shows the unread count in its status line.

Supported connections

| Connection | Platform | Setup | What it can do | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | iMessage | macOS 13 or later, terminal | Full Disk Access | Read and send text and files; show replies, tapbacks, edits, unsends and members |

Turn a service off in /config under channel.

<details> <summary>Setup details</summary>

iMessage

• Reading uses sqlite3 -readonly on ~/Library/Messages/chat.db, which requires Full Disk Access for your terminal. The pane lists the steps and names your terminal app.
• Sending text and files uses osascript. On your first send, macOS asks you to let your terminal control Messages.
• Messages gives no way to send a tapback, edit a message or mark one read, so channel shows those and cannot do them.

</details> <details> <summary>What each service reaches</summary> <br>

A service can start only the programs and call only the hosts listed here. Anything else is refused in hooks/core/fence.ts.

| Service | Programs it starts | Hosts it calls | | --- | --- | --- | | iMessage | /usr/bin/sqlite3, /usr/bin/osascript | none |

The pane itself starts /usr/bin/open when you press a file, and /usr/bin/sips to make a picture's or a PDF's preview. Previews are at most twelve temporary files in your TMPDIR, each overwritten in turn. The cells of a preview are averaged from the pixels they cover and encoded once per size, so redrawing the pane costs nothing more.

</details> <details> <summary>How it is built</summary> <br>

• hooks/core/contract.ts is what every service implements: a small required core, plus optional capabilities (attachments, threads, reactions, edits, read state, typing, members, search). The pane offers only what a service has.
• hooks/core/registry.ts lists the services. Adding one is a folder under hooks/providers/ and a line there.
• hooks/core/account.ts runs one service with its own loop and backoff; inbox.ts merges them; notify.ts decides what toasts; hub.ts ties them together.
• hooks/ui/ draws the pane: list.tsx the conversations, conversation.tsx one chat, picture.ts thumbnails as pixels or cells, format.ts labels, colors and days. hooks/register.tsx is wiring only.
• tests/kit/ has a scriptable fake service and the conformance checks every provider must pass.

</details> <details> <summary>Privacy</summary>

• What a chat says never reaches Claude by itself: no prompt, no transcript row, no tool.
• Only you move things across. → Claude writes a received file's path into your prompt box as a draft, and you send it. Claude's reply and the offered files go to a chat only when you press and send.
• Nothing is sent without your Enter or press.
• Message text stays in the plugin's memory: not in session state other plugins can read, not on disk. The only thing stored is which session shows toasts.
• Each service reaches only what the table above lists. iMessage makes no network request.

</details>

Development

claude --plugin-dir plugins/channel     # load it; edits hot-reload
claude plugin validate plugins/channel
claude plugin test plugins/channel
tsc -p plugins/channel                  # after one load writes .claude-plugin/types/