Claude iPhone Cam

A Claude Code mod that lets Claude see what your iPhone camera sees. Press 📷 snap above the prompt, check the thumbnail, type your question, send.

The terminal in the demo is drawn, the pies are real: photos by Joe Dumas and Debby Hudson on Unsplash. The demo and its build script live in the demo branch, so installing the plugin doesn't download them.

No AirDrop, no Telegram-to-yourself, no saving files. The iPhone is already a Mac webcam through Continuity Camera; this mod grabs one frame from it.

Install

Inside Claude Code, run:

/plugin marketplace add mikhin/claude-iphone-cam
/plugin install iphone-cam
/reload-plugins

Requirements

• macOS Ventura or later, iOS 16 or later, iPhone XR or newer
• Both devices on the same Apple ID, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on, iPhone locked and near the Mac
• ffmpeg (brew install ffmpeg)
• Camera access for your terminal app (macOS asks on the first snap)

What you see

[ 📷 snap ]
❯ _

After a snap:

╭──────────────╮ goes with the next message
│   (frame)    │ [ retake ]
│              │ [ drop ]
╰──────────────╯
❯ is my pie done?

• retake snaps again, drop forgets the frame.
• On send the frame goes with your message and the band clears.

How it works

1. ffmpeg -f avfoundation -list_devices finds the device named … iPhone … Camera (Desk View is skipped).
2. One ffmpeg run waits 1.5 s for exposure, then writes a full JPEG and a 640 px PNG thumbnail to $TMPDIR/claude-cam/.
3. The band above the prompt draws the thumbnail with Claude Code's Image element.
4. On send, a prompt.submit hook adds the JPEG's path to the message context, and Claude reads it.

A mod can only add text to a message, not image bytes, so Claude opens the frame with one Read call.

What it runs and sends

The mod runs only when you press snap, retake or drop, and when you send a message.

• Programs it starts, all on your Mac:
  • ffmpeg -hide_banner -f avfoundation -list_devices true -i "" lists the cameras, to find the iPhone by name
  • ffmpeg … -i "<iPhone camera>" -ss 1.5 -frames:v 1 <frame>.jpg -ss 1.5 -frames:v 1 -vf scale=640:-2 <frame>.png takes one frame (the full command is captureArgs in hooks/camera.ts)
  • mkdir -p $TMPDIR/claude-cam makes the folder the frames go to
• Files it reads and writes: it reads the TMPDIR environment variable, checks that /opt/homebrew/bin/ffmpeg exists, and writes frame-<n>.jpg and frame-<n>.png to $TMPDIR/claude-cam/. It never deletes them; macOS clears that folder.
• What it adds to your messages: on prompt.submit, only for a message you typed, and only while a frame is waiting, it adds one line of context: the path of the JPEG and a request to read it. Nothing else in the message changes.
• What it sends over the network: nothing. The mod opens no connections. The frame reaches Anthropic only when Claude reads it, as part of the conversation, like any file Claude reads.

License

MIT