nocap

no cap, no jargon — just tells you what it's actually doing.

nocap is a plain-English terminal app for Claude Code. It's the same real Claude Code underneath — real filesystem access, hooks, MCP servers, skills, subagents, the same permission system — but instead of raw tool-call JSON and diffs, you get a readable feed of what Claude is doing and a clear Yes/No card before anything risky happens.

Quickstart (2 minutes)

npx @sudhanshu1402/nocap

That's it. First time you run it, a short setup wizard walks you through:

1. Your Anthropic API key — pasted once, optionally saved locally (permissions locked to your user only).
2. A default model — Sonnet 5 (balanced), Opus 4.8 (most capable), or Haiku 4.5 (fastest/ cheapest). Plain-English hints, no need to know pricing.
3. How approvals work — nocap always asks before risky actions. This isn't a toggle you can turn off from the wizard.
4. Anonymous usage telemetry — off by default, your choice.

After that, just type what you want done, like you would to a person.

To install it permanently instead of using npx each time:

npm install -g @sudhanshu1402/nocap
nocap

What you're looking at

• Main pane (left) — your conversation with Claude: what you typed, what Claude says back.
• Insights (right) — a running plain-English log of every action Claude takes (reading a file, running a command, searching the web, etc.), whether or not it needed your approval. This is generated locally — it never costs you extra tokens.
• Status bar (bottom) — running cost in dollars, elapsed time, current permission mode, and the active model.
• Approval card — pops up before anything consequential (editing/deleting files, running a shell command, etc.). y approve · n deny · a always allow this tool for the session. nocap never approves anything on your behalf — every risky action waits for you.

Keyboard shortcuts

| Key | Action | | --- | --- | | Enter | send message | | Ctrl+J | newline in the input box | | Esc | interrupt the current turn | | y / n / a | approve / deny / always-allow (on an approval card) | | Ctrl+Z | undo the last change (file checkpoint, or a git snapshot for shell-made changes) | | Ctrl+H | browse and resume a past session | | PgUp / PgDn | scroll the transcript | | Ctrl+C | quit |

Scripting / CI use

For a single non-interactive turn (no terminal UI):

nocap --once "list the files in this repo"

Requires either ANTHROPIC_API_KEY in the environment or an existing claude CLI login — the wizard only runs in an interactive terminal.

Safety

• Never auto-approves a risky or irreversible action — every one goes through an approval card.
• Never logs or displays your API key or other secrets, including in crash output.
• Full Claude Code capability is preserved (your real hooks, MCP servers, skills, subagents, permission modes) — nocap is a UI layer, not a sandboxed subset.
• Telemetry is off unless you opt in during setup.

Contributing

git clone <repo-url>
cd nocap
npm install
npm run dev          # run against the real SDK (needs ANTHROPIC_API_KEY)
npm run lint && npm run typecheck && npm test && npm run build

Requires Node ≥22. No ink-text-input or other third-party Ink input components — inputs are built directly on Ink's useInput/usePaste to avoid version drift.

License

MIT