Claude Did What?!

AI slop masquerading as a terminal for the post-IDE era. Live diff viewer built in so you can see what your AI agent is doing to your codebase — without ever opening an editor.

Shipped while the tests were still running by Andrew Orr.

Why?

IDEs are on borrowed time. The workflow now is: open Claude Code, tell it what you want, review the changes as they stream in, iterate until you're happy, then commit, push, and open a PR — all without leaving the terminal. Claude Did What?! is the missing piece: a terminal with a built-in diff viewer so you can review, approve, and ship entirely from one window. No VS Code, no JetBrains, no context switching.

Features

• Split-pane layout: Terminal on the left, diff viewer on the right, with a resizable divider — everything in one window
• Real-time git diff: File changes appear automatically as they happen, no manual refresh needed
• Monaco-powered diff view: Full syntax highlighting with Automatic, Unified, and Split view modes
• VSCode syntax grammars: Picks up TextMate grammars from your installed VSCode extensions — if VSCode can highlight it, so can your diffs
• Instant CWD detection: Shell integration (bash/zsh/fish) reports directory changes instantly via OSC 7, no polling delay
• Smart tab naming: Tabs show your git branch name, or directory name when on main/master
• Multi-tab support: Multiple sessions with keyboard shortcuts, or double-click the tab bar to open a new tab
• Drag-and-drop tab reordering: Drag tabs to rearrange them, with a visual drop indicator
• Switchable tab position: Move tabs from the top bar to a vertical sidebar on the left via Settings
• AI waiting tab indicator: Background tabs waiting on an AI CLI are highlighted with a subtle tint and pulsing icon. Detected CLIs: Claude, Codex, OpenCode, Aider, Gemini, Goose, Cline, Amp, Crush, OpenHands, Auggie, Droid, Kilo, Vibe, Qwen, Copilot, Cursor Agent, and Kiro
• Close tab confirmation: Prompts before closing a tab when an AI CLI is actively running, showing the process name
• Terminal context menu: Right-click for Copy, Paste, Select All, Clear, and "Open tabs for subdirectories"
• Bulk subdirectory tabs: Right-click and open a tab for every first-level subdirectory of the current working directory — great for multi-repo workspaces
• Settings panel: UI scale (75%–150%), default diff view mode, word wrap default, tab position, and automation API toggle — all in one place
• WebGL-accelerated terminal: Hardware-accelerated rendering for smooth scrolling and output
• Cross-platform: macOS, Windows, and Linux — with native x64 and ARM64 builds

Installation

From Source

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/xorrbit/claudedidwhat.git
cd claudedidwhat

# Install dependencies (automatically rebuilds native modules for Electron)
npm install

# Run in development mode
npm run dev

# Build for production
npm run build

# Package for your platform
npm run package:linux   # Linux (AppImage, deb)
npm run package:mac     # macOS (dmg)
npm run package:win     # Windows (exe)

Note: The postinstall script automatically rebuilds node-pty for Electron. If you encounter native module errors, run npx electron-rebuild -f -w node-pty.

Pre-built Binaries

Download from the Releases page.

Usage

Keyboard Shortcuts

Shortcut	Action
Ctrl+T / Cmd+T	New tab
Ctrl+W / Cmd+W	Close tab
Ctrl+Tab	Next tab
Ctrl+Shift+Tab	Previous tab
Ctrl+1-9 / Cmd+1-9	Switch to tab by number
Ctrl+? / Cmd+?	Show help overlay
Ctrl+, / Cmd+,	Open settings

Diff Panel

The diff panel on the right side features:

• Floating file list: Changed files float over the terminal in a collapsible, resizable overlay with color-coded status indicators (Added, Modified, Deleted)
• File path header: Repo-relative path with one-click copy buttons for the full path or just the filename
• Diff viewer: Click any file to view its diff — toggle between Automatic, Unified, and Split view modes, with a word wrap toggle for long lines
• Branch-only changes: Only shows files changed in your branch, not unrelated changes from main/master
• Instant file switching: Diff content is cached so switching between files feels instant

Changes are detected in real-time as files are edited. The tab name automatically updates to reflect your current git branch or directory.

Performance

Optimized for large repositories and multi-tab workflows:

• Event-driven updates: Native file system events (inotify/FSEvents) instead of polling — git status only refreshes when files actually change. Falls back to lightweight polling on WSL2
• Instant CWD tracking: Shell integration emits OSC 7 escape sequences on every prompt, so cd is detected in milliseconds instead of waiting for a 5-second poll
• LRU diff cache: Recently viewed diffs are cached for instant file switching, with automatic eviction to bound memory usage
• Async large-diff loading: Uncached diff fetches are deferred by a tick so selection renders immediately, and very large diffs are mounted during idle time (200k+ combined chars, 40ms defer, 250ms idle timeout, 1000ms Monaco max computation time)
• Visibility-aware: Background tabs pause file watching and git operations until focused
• Cached git instances: SimpleGit instances and repo checks are reused instead of recreated per operation
• Async I/O: System calls (like macOS lsof) run asynchronously to avoid blocking the main thread
• Memoized components: React components use memo and CSS-based hover states to minimize re-renders
• Smart ignores: Skips node_modules, .git, dist, build, and other generated directories

Tech Stack

Component	Technology
Framework	Electron
Language	TypeScript
UI	React
Styling	Tailwind CSS + JetBrains Mono
Terminal	xterm.js (WebGL)
PTY	node-pty
Diff View	Monaco Editor + vscode-textmate
Git	simple-git
File Watching	Native fs.watch
Testing	Vitest + Playwright

Development

# Run development server with hot reload
npm run dev

# Run unit tests
npm run test:unit

# Run E2E tests
npm run test:e2e

# Lint code
npm run lint

# Format code
npm run format

Security

See SECURITY.md for the app's security architecture, threat model, and audit history.

Automation REST API (Optional, Dangerous)

This app includes an optional local REST API that can open a new terminal tab and run arbitrary bootstrap commands. This is designed to allow automation or another AI agent to prepare tabs for you by doing things like adding a new git worktree for an arbitrary branch, copying some files over and then launching claude.

It is intentionally treated as a dangerous feature:

• disabled by default
• localhost only (127.0.0.1)
• random port + bearer token
• strict input validation and rate limiting

1. Enable It

Edit this config file:

<userData>/automation/config.json

Typical userData paths:

• Linux: ~/.config/claudedidwhat
• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/claudedidwhat
• Windows: %APPDATA%/claudedidwhat

Example config:

{
  "version": 1,
  "enabled": true,
  "allowedRoots": ["/home/you/code"],
  "maxCommands": 25,
  "maxCommandLength": 4096,
  "maxRequestBytes": 262144,
  "requestTimeoutMs": 20000,
  "rateLimitPerMinute": 60
}

cwd in API requests must be inside one of allowedRoots.

2. Get Runtime Credentials

When enabled, the app writes:

<userData>/automation/credentials.json

Example:

{
  "version": 1,
  "host": "127.0.0.1",
  "port": 48321,
  "token": "<random-token>",
  "createdAt": "2026-02-07T00:00:00.000Z"
}

The port/token are generated per app launch.

3. Send a Bootstrap Request

Endpoint:

POST /v1/terminal/bootstrap

Required headers:

• Authorization: Bearer <token>
• Content-Type: application/json
• X-CDW-Client: <your-client-name>

Request body:

{
  "cwd": "/absolute/path/to/project",
  "commands": [
    "git status",
    "npm test"
  ]
}

Example curl:

curl -X POST "http://127.0.0.1:48321/v1/terminal/bootstrap" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer <token>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "X-CDW-Client: my-script" \
  -d '{"cwd":"/home/you/code/myrepo","commands":["git status","npm test"]}'

Success response:

{
  "sessionId": "session-..."
}

When enabled, the tab bar shows a small API pill indicator.

License

MIT