clawd-actor

A Claude Code mod: while Claude works, Clawd walks onto a little stage above the prompt and acts out what is going on — the spinner's -ing word (Sautéing, Pondering, Herding…) — then puts on a show of 32 scenes, a new one every 15 seconds, with little Clawds along for the ride.

Five scenes at the real frame rate, about 21 s in all (a real turn changes scene every 15 s). Every frame is the mod's own output, rendered by tools/.

What it does

• Acts out the spinner word. 32 scenes, matched by word stem, so Flambéing cooks and Dilly-dallying strolls. A word it does not know falls back to what the turn is doing (typing for tool use, talking while responding, thinking otherwise).
• Acts out the running tool when one is already running as a turn opens; it picks the opening scene instead of the word: Bash types, Read/Grep/Glob think, Edit/Write sketch, Agent herds sheep, Web* checks the weather, TodoWrite/Skill juggles, MCP tools cast spells, anything else is hammered at the forge.
• Changes scene every 15 seconds on long turns, whatever tools run, in an order shuffled per session that picks up where the last turn stopped, never the same scene twice in a row. A scene is picked when its act begins and holds for the whole act; nothing cuts it short.
• Wanders the stage. When all it carries is a thought bubble, notes or sparks, Clawd strolls left and right, swinging arms and legs, hopping at each turn and landing with a squash. By a pot, an oven, an anvil or a plant it stays put and works; the stage follows the terminal width (up to 60 columns). At the blackboard the board stays put and Clawd steps back to admire its work. By the campfire it sits still with a purple friend, and only the fire and their eyes move. Under the disco ball it dances in place while the floor flashes.
• Brings little friends. Small Clawds in blue, yellow, green and pink tag along: one copies its idle hop a beat late, two dance backup, one dances under the disco ball, two walk in a row behind it (and lead the way back), two sit by the campfire when the stage is wide enough, and one hatches from the egg, stands in its shell and hops out to say hello.
• Has a face. Happy ^ ^ eyes, blinks, glances around, and sways so its far side falls into shadow, after the official Clawd animation; on the move it looks where it is going.
• Talks back. /clawd pets, feeds or waves at Clawd, or chats with it, even mid-turn (see below).
• Leaves when the turn ends, and draws nothing while idle (the frame timer only redraws during a turn), unless you call it out with /clawd.

Scene	Spinner words (some of them)
think	Pondering, Musing, Clauding, Noodling, Ruminating
chalk	Deciphering, Elucidating, Philosophising, Deliberating, Reasoning
cook / bake / brew	Sautéing, Simmering, Whisking / Baking, Kneading / Brewing, Percolating
walk / run / moonwalk	Moseying, Wandering / Scampering, Galloping / Moonwalking
herd	Herding, Wrangling, Mustering
spin	Spinning, Churning, Reticulating, Combobulating
magic / levitate	Conjuring, Manifesting, Transmuting / Levitating, Hyperspacing
hatch / grow	Hatching, Incubating / Sprouting, Germinating
forge / compute	Forging, Crafting, Creating / Computing, Crunching, Synthesizing
dance / disco	Vibing, Jitterbugging, Jamming / Boogieing, Grooving — under a spinning mirror ball
juggle / honk	Juggling / Honking, Booping
sketch / weather / thunder	Sketching, Doodling / Misting, Billowing / Thundering
dig / flow	Burrowing, Spelunking / Flowing, Undulating
shift	Beaming, Shifting, Dodging — calls out 閃身步 top to bottom, then flashes across the stage leaving fading afterimages
kick / skate / campfire	Kicking, Dribbling / Skating, Gliding / Kindling, Smoldering — no built-in word matches these yet, so they mostly turn up in the rotation

Talk to Clawd

/clawd runs at once, even while Claude is working, and never interrupts the turn:

Clawd's answer here is an example; in a session it comes from Haiku.

You type	Clawd
/clawd pet	purrs, with hearts floating up
/clawd feed	catches a cookie and munches it
/clawd wave (or hi, hello)	waves back
/clawd dance	dances under the disco ball
/clawd shift (or 閃身步)	calls out 閃身步 and flash-steps across the stage, afterimages trailing
/clawd <anything else>	answers in a speech bubble

Actions are free and instant. Anything else is a chat: Clawd ponders for a moment, then answers in a sentence or two, in your language, knowing what Claude is up to right now. The answer comes from Haiku (one small haiku call per message, on your usage) and shows only in Clawd's bubble: it is not written to the transcript, so Claude's own conversation never sees it. Each message stands alone; Clawd does not remember earlier ones. Between turns Clawd steps out for the reaction and leaves again after it.

閃身步 (shift)

閃身步, the flash step, is a martial-arts dodge: a burst of speed that carries the fighter aside so fast the eye catches only afterimages. Clawd does it as a proper move, name first:

閃
身  ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓ ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓  ▐▛███▛▌
步 ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▝▜█████▙▖
     ▓▓ ▓▓   ▓▓ ▓▓

1. Calls the move. 閃, 身, 步 appear one at a time, top to bottom in a column behind Clawd, the way < HONK! > is shouted, while Clawd looks the way it is about to go.
2. Takes its stance, arms up, once the name is complete.
3. Flashes across the stage in three frames, leaving an afterimage at each spot it left.
4. Lands sliding with a squash; the afterimages fade (▓ ▒ ░) and are gone, and Clawd hops with a pleased smile.

Then it calls the move again and flashes back the other way, about three seconds a pass. /clawd shift or /clawd 閃身步 plays it at once, from the call; as a scene it comes with the spinner word Beaming, and in the rotation. It needs a terminal font that draws CJK characters two columns wide, as nearly all do.

Install

Requires a Claude Code build with function-hook mods (claude plugin validate knows hooks.json modules). Developed and tested on Claude Code 2.1.296.

Clawd shows in claude in any terminal (including an editor's terminal and the JetBrains plugin) and in the Code tab of the Desktop app. The VS Code chat panel, claude -p and cloud sessions draw no mod interface, so Clawd does not show there.

From this repository as a marketplace:

/plugin marketplace add BrianHuang813/clawd-actor
/plugin install clawd-actor@clawd-actor
/reload-plugins

Or straight from a clone, for one session:

git clone https://github.com/BrianHuang813/clawd-actor
claude --plugin-dir ./clawd-actor

Update

When a newer version is out, a notice says so a couple of seconds after Claude Code starts: the mod compares its own version with the one on main once a session (one small request to GitHub; nothing is shown when offline or up to date).

Run /clawd-actor:update, or just ask Claude to update clawd-actor. Either way Claude refreshes this marketplace and updates the plugin with Claude Code's own plugin manager, tells you the version it went from and to and sums up what is new, and /reload-plugins loads it. However it was updated, the first session on a new version says so in a notice, with the release's headline and a link to the release notes. By hand, the same is:

claude plugin marketplace update clawd-actor
claude plugin update clawd-actor@clawd-actor

A clone run with --plugin-dir updates with git pull.

Plays well with other band mods

The stage is drawn in the AbovePrompt band. The hook always calls next(e) and stacks what the mods beneath it draw under the stage, so other band mods keep showing. It hands them the band's rows less the ones the stage and bubble take, so together they still fit without scrolling, and when the band is too short for the stage Clawd stays out. A band mod that answers without calling next(e) hides everything beneath it — if Clawd never shows up, look for one.

How it works

• ui.render on Spinner only observes: it remembers the word and mode and lets the engine draw the spinner as usual.
• tool.call notes the tool in flight and forgets it when the call returns.
• /clawd is registered immediate, so it runs mid-turn. Its command.run hook returns no text (nothing for the transcript or the model); it sets a reaction the band plays over the show. A chat calls $.model.complete from a one-shot timer, so the prompt never waits on the model. hooks/chat.ts holds the parsing, Clawd's persona and the speech bubble.
• One timer, started in session.start, advances a frame counter in $.state every 140 ms while a turn runs; the band reads it, which subscribes it to redraws. A timer started inside a turn.start hook does not outlive that dispatch, which is why it lives in session.start.
• Whether to draw at all follows the band's own isWorking prop.
• hooks/scenes.ts is pure: a 4-row grid of cells, a scene per name, sceneAt() choosing an act's scene, hold() keeping it for the whole act, and frameRows() turning the grid into coloured runs.
• The update notice: session.start sets a one-shot timer that, two seconds later, reads the version in the installed plugin.json, fetches the one on main, and toasts when main's is newer. skills/update/SKILL.md is the /clawd-actor:update skill that runs the update.

Contributing

Bug reports, ideas and new scenes are welcome: see CONTRIBUTING.md for how to report a bug, run Clawd from a clone, test a change, regenerate the GIFs and send a pull request.

Notes

Clawd is Claude Code's mascot; the sprite follows the one on Claude Code's welcome screen. This is a fan-made mod, not affiliated with or endorsed by Anthropic.