🦀 Claude Mascot

A tiny pixel-art crab version of Claude that lives on your Windows taskbar. He walks, naps, dances, rides the tops of your windows, roams every monitor you have — and his mood tracks your real Claude Code rate-limit usage. While Claude Code is working, a little bubble over his head shows a spinner verb (Pondering… Cogitating… Flibbertigibbeting…), drawn from the CLI's own list. Throw him and he tumbles. Throw him high enough and he parachutes down. Sometimes he pulls out a tiny laptop of his own and gets some work done, puts on headphones and drifts off into music only he can hear, stops for a coffee — or turns up in a cowboy hat and wears it for a couple of minutes. And when you feel like a show, the tray's Actions menu can send him on a jeep ride, arrange an alien abduction, run him down with a cattle stampede, set Godzilla on him, or give him the hour off. In the last week of October he turns into a jack-o'-lantern, and the Holiday › Halloween menu has four spooky scenes of its own.

Unofficial fan project. Not made by or affiliated with Anthropic. The pixel art is original. "Claude" and Claude Code belong to Anthropic.

Install / run

npx claude-mascot

or keep him around:

npm install -g claude-mascot
claude-mascot          # summon
claude-mascot stop     # dismiss

Requirements: Windows 10/11 x64, .NET 8 Desktop Runtime (Windows offers the download automatically on first launch if it's missing).

What he does on his own

• Roams the taskbar edge — walks, pauses, occasionally dances or naps.

• Multi-monitor — matching side-by-side monitors become one long beach: he walks across the seam. Mixed setups (laptop + monitor) keep him on the screen he's on; drag him between them. He also re-asserts himself if a dock, undock, or lock screen tries to bury or strand him.

• Mood = your usage. Signed into Claude Code? His expression follows your session/weekly utilization: watchful at 50%, surprised at 80%, red and angry at 90%+. Sleeps when your usage window is empty.

• /usage-style popup — hover or click him for session + weekly bars with reset times.

• Spinner verbs — while Claude Code runs a turn, he tells you what it's doing: "✻ Marinating…". One verb per burst, rotating once a minute on long turns. Claude Desktop's local Cowork sessions count too.

• Window platforming — drop him on top of a (non-maximized) window and he'll stand on it, walk its width, and ride it as you move it. Walks off the edge? Gravity.

• Toss physics — flick him and he flies, tumbling. He bounces off screen edges (with a full somersault on a solid hit), and a fall from high enough pops a striped parachute at the halfway line for a gentle float down.

• Laptop breaks — every so often he pulls out a tiny laptop, flips it open, hammers at the keys for a few seconds — eyes on the screen, claws a blur — then closes it and puts it away.

• Music breaks — now and then he lifts a pair of pixel headphones onto his head, closes his eyes, and bobs gently while eighth notes drift up from the earcups. Interrupt him and he packs them away.

• Coffee breaks — the IT classic: a steaming mug floats up from beside him and he takes a few slow sips before putting it away.

• The cowboy hat — rarely, and entirely on his own, a cowboy hat drops onto his head and he just keeps it on. He wears it for a minute or two while he carries on walking, dancing and glancing about as normal, then lifts it off again. Drag him around and it stays on.

• Celebrations — a Claude turn over 5 minutes earns a victory dance; over 15 minutes adds pixel confetti. When your rate-limit window resets, he throws himself a confetti party.

Set pieces — the Actions menu

On-demand shows: right-click the crab (or the tray icon) → Actions. They never start on their own — the one exception is Halloween's auto-play, below, which you can switch off.

Party!

Drops everything and dances, with a burst of pixel confetti over his head.

Jeep ride

A pixel jeep pulls up, he hops in, and it drives him off the screen — over a double bump and a proper hill climb, dust kicking off the rear wheel — then brings him back around from the opposite edge and vanishes in a puff of dust.

UFO abduction

A saucer parks overhead, locks a beam onto him — eyes wide — and lifts him up with a slow rotation, then bolts off. It dumps him out of a low return flyby a moment later, high enough that the parachute is guaranteed.

Stampede!

He puts on the cowboy hat, a campfire and a saguaro fade in beside him, and he pulls out a coffee to enjoy the moment. A few seconds later a herd of longhorn cattle comes through behind a rolling dust cloud — his eyes go wide as they get close — and they carry him clean off the screen, hat and all. The fire burns out, the screen sits empty for a beat, and then a door appears and he walks back out of it, no hat. He lost it out there somewhere.

Godzilla!

A neon skyline fades in beside him, and Godzilla comes up over the horizon from behind the rooftops — the crab's eyes go wide the moment his head clears them. He roars (SKREEEEEEONGK), topples the towers into the ground, then tilts his head down to look at the crab. His spine charges plate by plate from the tail up, his jaws open, and the beam leaves the crab burned black and smoking, still wide-eyed. Godzilla turns and walks back over the horizon; once he's gone, the crab shakes the soot off.

Take a break (1 hour)

Sharing your screen in a meeting? A pixel door materializes beside him, swings open, and he walks through it — gone for the hour, so your screen share stays crab-free. The same menu item becomes Come back now if the meeting ends early; otherwise the door lets him back out when time's up.

Halloween — Actions › Holiday › Halloween

The pumpkin costume

From October 24 to 31 he's a jack-o'-lantern: a ribbed pumpkin shell, a stem and leaf on top, and his own crab legs underneath. His eyes are carved out and lit by a candle that follows Claude — it flickers while Claude Code is working and goes dark when it's idle. His moods still track your usage: an O of a mouth when he's surprised, and at 90%+ a snarl and a red flame.

He doesn't just appear in costume. Lightning strikes him twice, a burst of smoke swallows him, and he steps out a pumpkin.

Costume: Auto (Oct 24–31, the default), On, or Off — under Actions › Holiday › Halloween › Costume. The Halloween scenes below dress him up for their length in any season, transforming him first if he isn't a pumpkin yet.

Trick or Treat

A jack-o'-lantern pail rises into his hand and a door fades in beside him. He knocks twice, the door swings open on a warm porch light, and candy arcs out of the doorway into the pail. The door closes, and he strolls off with a full pail.

BOO!

A sheet ghost rises out of the ground behind him while he's looking the other way. It throws its arms up — BOO! — and he spins round and jumps out of his skin, then lands like any good toss while the ghost sinks back down.

Broom Flyby

A broom swoops in low and he hops aboard. They loop up across a full moon at the top of your screen — in silhouette, carved grin still glowing, bats circling — and back down to drop him off, before it zips away in a trail of sparkles.

Graveyard

Two headstones and a low fog roll in beside him. The ground rumbles, bony claws push up through the dirt, and a skeleton crab — his own shape in bone — climbs out and waves while he backs away. Then it sinks back into the grave.

Play actions on their own

During the Auto week, one of the four plays by itself about once an hour, working through all of them before any repeats. It never starts while he's on a break, being dragged, showing the usage popup, while your session is locked, or while Windows reports a presentation or a full-screen app. Teams screen sharing can't be detected, so before a call use Take a break, or untick Play actions on their own (or set Costume to Off) under Actions › Holiday › Halloween › Costume.

Tray settings

Size (Small/Medium/Large), spinner verbs on/off, start with Windows, hide/show, refresh usage now, the Actions menu, and the Halloween costume. Right-clicking the crab opens the same menu without a trip to the tray.

Privacy

Everything stays on your machine. The app reads your Claude Code OAuth token from %USERPROFILE%\.claude\.credentials.json and uses it for exactly one thing: polling api.anthropic.com's usage endpoint (the one behind Claude Code's /usage) every 3 minutes. The spinner-verb feature watches transcript file timestamps only — it never reads their content. That covers Claude Code's %USERPROFILE%\.claude\projects and, if you use Claude Desktop's local Cowork mode, its transcript folder under the app's own data directory — again, timestamps only. No telemetry, no logging, no other network calls. Not signed into Claude Code? He still roams; the popup just says "no data".

Tip jar

If he's made your desk a little more fun, you can leave a tip. Entirely optional — he roams just the same either way.