hands

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Overview

Hands is a Claude Code plugin that runs a crew of Claude Code instances in one repo — a coordinator with all of the context, workers in their own git worktrees, and you making every call that matters — with a durable journal that every kitchen on the machine writes to, and that you can query.

What Hands is

One install gives you an agent fleet organized like a kitchen brigade. The repo’s main checkout becomes the expo — the expeditor at the pass, who fires tickets, reviews everything that returns, and escalates only what genuinely needs you. Stations are autonomous Claude Code instances, each in its own git worktree on its own branch, that know exactly one thing: the ticket in front of them. You are the chef: nothing merges, ships, or deploys without you.

Everything is coordinated over a local, per-repo message bus (a shared SQLite database) with strict pass discipline — stations talk only to the expo and to you, enforced by the server before anything is written. Every action is recorded in the books: an append-only event log in a local SQLite database (~/.claude/hands/books.db, machine-wide, not per-repo), with derived human-readable markdown pages rendered beside it. The books are never off, and there is nothing to configure — no account, no network — and the record is queryable: hands recall --type question.escalate --since 7d. See The books.

ticket fired work returned journaled — the expo to the books a sub-agent, cast from a station

Install

in Claude Code
/plugin marketplace add https://hands-cc.dev/marketplace.json
/plugin install hands@hands

That one install registers everything: the MCP server (the hands_* tools), the passive-standup hooks, the /hands:expo · /hands:station · /hands:init · /hands:dashboard skills, and the hands CLI on your Bash PATH. Requires Node ≥ 22.5.

then, from your repo's main checkout
/hands:expo               # the expo takes the pass
hands scale 3             # open three of the five stations
/hands:dashboard          # watch service → localhost:4319

How these docs are organized

  • —Concepts — every domain term, in detail. Read this first if the vocabulary is new.
  • —Commands, The books, Coordination, Token usage — reference: every skill, CLI command and MCP tool; where the books live, what lands in them and how to query them; the wake system that makes cross-instance coordination cheap; and how token burn is measured and minimized.
  • —Delegation, The dashboard, The sous — guides: how the expo decides who does what, how to read the live view, and the escalation hop between them.