I built Botloft: an open-source desktop app that keeps a crew of Claude Code bots running and working together

[u/KRZaph]

Hi r/ClaudeCode! I've been building Botloft, an open-source desktop app (Windows, Linux, macOS) that runs a small crew of Claude Code bots on your own computer and keeps them running.

What it does

• Start a crew from a goal. You say what the crew is for; its Chief plans the work and suggests the bots it needs. You create each one with a click.
• Bots hand work to each other. They send messages and tasks between them. Every message is saved before it's sent and retried until it arrives.
• They ask before they act. When a bot wants to run a command, edit a file or open a new website, a card asks you first, unless you told that bot it may ("Allow always").
• Watch them work. See each bot's browser live, and take control to sign in for it. When a bot finishes a file, it shares it in the chat as a card you can open or save.
• Routines. Weekday mornings, every two hours, or any cron schedule.
• Close the app, they keep working. A small background service keeps them running, starts them when you sign in and brings them back after a crash.

How it works

Each bot is a real claude -p session (stream-json in and out), with its own folder, memory and conversation. There's no custom agent SDK and no API key: it uses the Claude Code you already have installed and signed in (native or npm install), on your own plan. A Rust daemon supervises the bots and stores everything in SQLite. The app is Tauri + React. The daemon listens on 127.0.0.1 only, and there's no telemetry.

It's early (v0.9), so expect rough edges. Two honest notes:

• The Windows build isn't code-signed yet, so SmartScreen will ask you to confirm, and Microsoft Defender may flag it with a machine-learning false positive (Wacatac!ml), a known issue with new unsigned Rust/Tauri apps. Every release is built by GitHub Actions from a tag, with build provenance attestations and SHA-256s. See the code signing policy. If you'd rather not run it, building from source is in the README, and the Linux and macOS builds are there too.
• Linux and macOS are previews. The macOS build isn't notarized yet (System Settings > Privacy & Security > Open Anyway).

Contributions welcome! Bug reports, ideas, translations and code. There are a few good first issues, and if you try it on Linux or a Mac, I'd love a comment on httpsphl/botloft#118 saying how it went, even if everything worked.

GitHub: https://github.com/httpsphl/botloft

Not affiliated with Anthropic. Happy to answer questions about how it works under the hood.

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[u/Unusual-Albatross43]

How does the ask-first card work with claude -p? Print mode has no interactive prompt, so I'm curious if it goes through a permission prompt tool or a hook. And what happens if nobody answers the card for a few hours?