phone-a-friend is a CLI orchestration layer for AI coding agents. Relay tasks to any backend, spin up multi-model teams, or run persistent multi-agent sessions with a live web dashboard.

| Mode | What it does | Best for | |------|-------------|----------| | Relay | One-shot delegation to Codex, Gemini, Ollama, or Claude | Quick second opinions, code reviews, analysis | | Team | Iterative multi-backend refinement over N rounds | Collaborative review, converging on a solution | | Agentic | Persistent multi-agent sessions with @mention routing | Autonomous collaboration, adversarial review, deep analysis |

TUI Dashboard

Web Dashboard

Quick Start

Prerequisites: Node.js 20+ and at least one backend:

• Claude Code
• Codex CLI
• Gemini CLI
• Ollama

Install:

npm install -g @freibergergarcia/phone-a-friend
phone-a-friend    # first run shows a guided menu — choose Setup

The setup wizard detects your backends, installs the Claude Code plugin, and verifies everything works.

Claude Code marketplace (commands and skills only):

If you use Claude Code, you can install directly from the marketplace:

/plugin marketplace add freibergergarcia/phone-a-friend
/plugin install phone-a-friend@phone-a-friend-marketplace

This fetches the latest version from npm automatically. To update later:

/plugin marketplace update phone-a-friend-marketplace
/plugin update phone-a-friend@phone-a-friend-marketplace

[!NOTE] Marketplace install gives you Claude Code integration (slash commands and skills). For the full CLI including agentic mode, the TUI dashboard, and the web dashboard on localhost, install globally with npm install -g @freibergergarcia/phone-a-friend.

From source:

git clone https://github.com/freibergergarcia/phone-a-friend.git
cd phone-a-friend
npm install && npm run build
./dist/index.js   # first run guides you through setup

Then from Claude Code, just talk naturally — the plugin loads the skills automatically:

Ask Gemini to review the error handling in relay.ts

Spin up Codex and Gemini to review the docs.
Then spin another agent to review their reviews and report back.

Build a team with Claude and Ollama. Have them review the website copy,
loop through 3 rounds, and converge on final suggestions.

No slash commands needed. Once the plugin is installed (the setup wizard does this automatically), Claude loads the /phone-a-friend and /phone-a-team skills. Mention one backend and Claude routes through /phone-a-friend; mention multiple and Claude can use /phone-a-team for iterative refinement. You can also invoke either skill explicitly.

[!TIP] Power-user setup: Run Claude Code in tmux and enable bypass permissions (⏵⏵) for trusted repos. Agent teams show up in split panes, so you can watch agents work in parallel without approval pauses. Pair it with phone-a-friend agentic mode for fully autonomous multi-agent sessions.

CLI Usage

Relay

Delegate a task to any backend and get the result back:

phone-a-friend --to codex --prompt "Review this code"
phone-a-friend --to gemini --prompt "Analyze the architecture" --model gemini-2.5-flash
phone-a-friend --to claude --prompt "Refactor this module"
phone-a-friend --to ollama --prompt "Explain this function"
phone-a-friend --to claude --prompt "Review this code" --stream   # Stream tokens live

Review

Context-aware code reviews — automatically pulls the current git diff so you don't have to paste code:

phone-a-friend --to claude --review               # Review current diff
phone-a-friend --to codex --review --base develop  # Review against a specific branch

Agentic

Spawn multiple agents that collaborate via @mentions (see Agentic Mode below):

phone-a-friend agentic run --agents reviewer:claude,critic:claude --prompt "Review this code"
phone-a-friend agentic logs               # View past sessions
phone-a-friend agentic replay --session <id>  # Replay transcript
phone-a-friend agentic dashboard           # Launch web dashboard (localhost:7777)

Ops

phone-a-friend                 # Interactive TUI dashboard (TTY only)
phone-a-friend setup           # Guided setup wizard
phone-a-friend doctor          # Health check all backends
phone-a-friend config show     # Show resolved config
phone-a-friend config edit     # Open in $EDITOR

Backends

| Backend | Type | Streaming | How it works | |---------|------|-----------|-------------| | Codex | CLI subprocess | No | Runs codex exec with sandbox and repo context | | Gemini | CLI subprocess | No | Runs gemini --prompt with --yolo auto-approve | | Ollama | HTTP API | Yes (NDJSON) | POSTs to localhost:11434/api/chat via native fetch | | Claude | CLI subprocess | Yes (JSON) | Runs claude with sandbox-to-tool mapping |

Ollama configuration via environment variables:

• OLLAMA_HOST -- custom host (default: http://localhost:11434)
• OLLAMA_MODEL -- default model (overridden by --model flag)

Streaming

Backends that support streaming deliver tokens as they arrive via --stream:

phone-a-friend --to claude --prompt "Review this code" --stream

Streaming is enabled by default in the config (defaults.stream = true). Disable with --no-stream or config set defaults.stream false.

Agentic Mode

Let one agent review while another critiques — catching bugs, inconsistencies, and blind spots before you even see the code.

Agentic mode spawns multiple Claude agents that communicate via @mentions within a shared session. An orchestrator routes messages between agents, enforces guardrails, and streams every event to a live web dashboard where you can watch the collaboration in real time.

Each agent accumulates context through persistent CLI sessions — later responses build on earlier ones, so agents develop genuine understanding of the problem as the session progresses.

Currently supports Claude agents only. See AGENTS.md for full architecture details.

# Start an agentic session
phone-a-friend agentic run \
  --agents reviewer:claude,critic:claude \
  --prompt "Review the auth module"

# View past sessions and replay transcripts
phone-a-friend agentic logs
phone-a-friend agentic replay --session <id>

# Launch web dashboard (real-time session visualization)
phone-a-friend agentic dashboard              # default: localhost:7777
phone-a-friend agentic dashboard --port 8080

How it works:

1. The orchestrator spawns each agent with the initial prompt and a unique name (e.g., ada.reviewer, fern.critic)
2. Agents respond and @mention other agents (or @all / @user)
3. The orchestrator routes messages to the targeted agents
4. Agents reply in subsequent turns, building on accumulated context
5. The session ends when agents converge (no new messages), hit the turn limit, or time out

What you get:

• Live web dashboard -- watch agents collaborate in real time at localhost:7777 (SSE-powered)
• Persistent sessions -- agents accumulate context across turns via UUID-based session resumption
• @mention routing -- agents address each other by name (@ada.reviewer:), broadcast with @all, or surface findings with @user
• Guardrails -- max turns (20), ping-pong detection, session timeout (15 min), turn budget warnings
• Full audit trail -- SQLite-backed transcript persistence for replay, logs, and post-session analysis
• Creative agent naming -- agents get memorable human names so you can follow the conversation

Documentation

Full usage guide, examples, CLI reference, and configuration details:

freibergergarcia.github.io/phone-a-friend

Uninstall

npm uninstall -g @freibergergarcia/phone-a-friend

The Claude Code plugin is removed automatically.

Contributing

All changes go through pull requests -- no direct pushes to main.

1. Branch off main using a recognized prefix (see table below)
2. Open a PR against main -- a version label is auto-applied from the branch name
3. CI must pass before merge (includes label check)
4. PRs are squash-merged (one commit per change, clean linear history)
5. Head branches are auto-deleted after merge
6. On merge, version is auto-bumped based on the label

Branch prefixes:

| Prefix | Label | |--------|-------| | fix/, bugfix/ | patch | | chore/, docs/, ci/, refactor/ | patch | | feat/, feature/ | minor | | breaking/ | major |

Unrecognized prefixes require adding patch, minor, or major manually.

Development

npm install              # Install dependencies
npm run build            # Build dist/ (tsup)
npm test                 # Run tests (vitest)
npm run typecheck        # Type check (tsc --noEmit)

License

Apache-2.0. See LICENSE and NOTICE.