crit-tui

A crit review loop inside Claude Code, as a mod. Comment on lines of the conversation, the working-tree diff, or a file in a pane. Send the review to Claude in one go. Claude answers each comment in its thread through a tool.

Early version.

Install

Needs Claude Code 2.1.287 or later (mods) and the crit CLI on your PATH.

/plugin marketplace add tomasz-tomczyk/crit
/plugin install crit-tui@crit

It sits next to the main crit plugin from the same marketplace; you can have both. To try it from a checkout instead:

claude --plugin-dir integrations/claude-code-tui

Use

• /crit-tui opens the pane (last source used, the conversation at first)
• /crit-tui chat, /crit-tui diff, /crit-tui file <path> pick the source
• /crit-tui send sends the review, /crit-tui close closes the pane

The pane is one Client region: it gets raw keys and mouse events. Click it once to give it the keys (Esc gives them back to the prompt).

| input | does | | --- | --- | | click a line | move the cursor there | | drag | select rows | | click a thread | pick it for r / x | | j k, ↑ ↓, wheel | move | | shift+↑ ↓, or v then move | select rows | | space / pagedown, ctrl+u / pageup | page | | g G, home end | top, bottom | | n p, → ← | next, previous message or file | | l, tab | next thread | | c, enter | comment on the line or selection | | r | reply to the picked thread, or the one on this line | | x | resolve it | | s | send drafts and replies to Claude | | a | ask Claude to review the diff and leave comments | | 1 2 3 | conversation, diff, file | | h | show or hide resolved threads | | f | reload the source |

While typing a comment: enter saves, shift+enter adds a line, ctrl+u clears. To cancel: enter or backspace on an empty box, or click cancel. ctrl+c and Esc never reach the pane: Claude Code takes them.

While the pane is closed, a band above the prompt shows drafts and new replies from Claude, with send and open buttons. The status line shows the same counts. A reply in the transcript that has comments gets a line under it with the count.

What Claude gets

Three tools:

• mcp__crit-tui__reply { id, body, resolve? }: answer a comment
• mcp__crit-tui__comment { file, line, end_line?, body }: leave a comment on code
• mcp__crit-tui__threads { include_resolved? }: list open threads

send submits one prompt with each new comment (where, quoted lines, body, id) and each new reply, and asks Claude to answer every item with reply.

Where comments live

Everything goes to crit through its CLI, so the crit browser UI and crit comments see the same review.

• Diff and file comments go to the repo's review file with crit comment --json. A partial selection carries quote and quote_offset, as a web UI text selection does (an older crit ignores the two fields).
• Chat comments go to a crit plan named claude-chat-<session id>. On the first chat comment the mod saves the conversation with crit plan --name <slug> --no-wait (one row per line), then comments with crit comment --plan <slug>. After each turn it saves again; crit adds a version only when the text changed. Sessions with no chat comments create nothing. Needs a crit with crit plan --no-wait; with an older crit, chat comments stay in the session.
• Claude's replies are written with --author Claude.
• Without the crit CLI (setting critBin), all comments stay in the session.

How the pane is built

• hooks/register.tsx owns the data (documents, threads, crit sync) and draws the pane as one <Client module="./client.tsx">.
• hooks/client.tsx owns the cursor, selection, scrolling and the comment box, and posts each change (comment, reply, resolve, send, ...) to the hooks module through ui.message.
• A Client's props are capped near 100k characters, so it gets a window of rows around the cursor and asks for a new window near the edges.
• The engine ignores a setState made while the Client draws, so the Client keeps its state in a module variable and calls setState only from its key and mouse handlers.

Developing

claude plugin validate integrations/claude-code-tui
claude plugin test integrations/claude-code-tui

Limits of this early version

• crit paths are taken as repo-root relative. Start Claude Code at the repo root.
• Removed (-) diff lines anchor to the new-side line they sit at; crit has no old-side anchor in crit comment --json.
• crit comment --plan leaves anchor empty (crit bug), so a chat comment does not follow its text if earlier lines of the conversation change.
• Reopening a resolved crit thread is left to the crit browser UI.
• The diff is git diff HEAD plus up to 20 untracked files.