Why this exists

Anthropic made Claude FM, a live stream for thinking and building. They even added /radio mode. The odd part is that the official path opens the stream in a browser.

For an audio-only stream, that is a heavy default: a video page, browser cache, extra storage, more bandwidth, and another tab sitting around for no real reason. It felt like a strange miss from a company operating at that level.

claudefm is the simpler path I wanted: terminal in, audio out. No browser tab required.

Install

npm install -g claudefm

Requires Node.js 18 or newer.

macOS quick install:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/GithubAnant/claudefm/main/install.sh | sh

Run

claudefm

When terminal playback is ready, claudefm starts the stream and shows playback status, progress, volume, and controls.

If playback dependencies are missing, claudefm prints the setup command to run and exits instead of silently opening YouTube. Use claudefm open when you intentionally want the browser version.

Controls

| Key | Action | | --- | --- | | space | Pause or resume | | left / right | Seek backward or forward | | h / l | Seek backward or forward | | + / = | Volume up | | - | Volume down | | o | Open YouTube | | q | Quit |

Requirements

Terminal playback needs:

• yt-dlp
• mpv or ffplay

mpv is recommended for the full dashboard controls. ffplay works as a simpler audio fallback.

Check your machine:

claudefm doctor

Print setup guidance:

claudefm setup

Run the recommended setup command:

claudefm setup --yes

Common dependency installs:

# macOS
brew install yt-dlp mpv

# Debian / Ubuntu
sudo apt-get install yt-dlp mpv

# Fedora
sudo dnf install yt-dlp mpv

# Arch
sudo pacman -S yt-dlp mpv

# Windows
winget install yt-dlp.yt-dlp mpv.net

Commands

These are the supported commands exposed by the CLI:

| Command | What it does | | --- | --- | | claudefm | Start the terminal player | | claudefm play | Start the terminal player explicitly | | claudefm open | Open Claude FM in your browser | | claudefm doctor | Check playback dependencies | | claudefm setup | Print the recommended setup command | | claudefm setup --yes | Run the recommended setup command | | claudefm --help | Show help | | claudefm --version | Show version |

The default stream is the official Claude FM YouTube live stream.