📎 Clippy for Agents

A Windows-98 Clippy that lives in your browser and keeps you company while Claude Code works:

• Narrates your real session — every prompt, tool call, and result streams into a Win98 terminal via Claude Code hooks.
• Gates destructive commands — rm -rf, git push --force, git reset --hard, drop table, fork bombs… Claude Code pauses until you click Allow/Deny in a Win98 warning dialog.
• Answers your questions — type into the "Ask Clippy" box and get an answer in the speech bubble. Questions run through claude -p (headless mode) in a separate process, so your terminal session is never touched — no turn consumed, no context polluted, nothing blocked.

Install

npm install -g clippy-for-agents
clippy-for-agents install     # wires hooks into ~/.claude/settings.json

install keeps a one-time backup at ~/.claude/settings.json.clippy-backup and never touches hooks it didn't create.

Use

clippy-for-agents             # starts the server, opens http://localhost:3636

Then run claude in any project. Watch the window. Ask Clippy things.

(clippy98 works as a shorter alias for every command.)

Requirements

• Node.js 18+
• Claude Code (claude in PATH — also used to answer your questions, with your existing login; no API key needed)

How "Ask Clippy" works

The server spawns claude -p in the directory of your most recent Claude Code session (so Clippy can read your project to answer), with a Clippy persona prompt. The answer is streamed to the browser over SSE. Default model is haiku for snappy answers — override with CLIPPY_MODEL:

CLIPPY_MODEL=sonnet clippy-for-agents

Safety notes

• If the server isn't running, hooks exit instantly and silently — Claude Code behaves exactly as normal.
• Gate timeout is 55s; on timeout the decision falls back to Claude Code's own permission prompt.
• The gate only ever returns your click as the decision. Clippy has opinions, not authority.
• Change the port with CLIPPY_PORT=4444 clippy-for-agents (and export CLIPPY_PORT=4444 in the shell where you run claude).

Uninstall

clippy-for-agents uninstall   # removes the hooks
npm uninstall -g clippy-for-agents