# Claude companion
Claude companion (aka "The Companion") is a web and mobile UI for [[Claude Code]] and [[OpenAI Codex]] CLI sessions. It provides a browser-based interface to launch, monitor, and control AI coding agents, replacing the need to juggle multiple terminal windows.
Built by The Vibe Company (Stan Girard). MIT license.
## Key Features
- **Parallel sessions**: run multiple agents simultaneously without terminal switching
- **Full visibility**: streaming output, tool calls, and tool results in a unified timeline
- **Permission control**: approve or deny sensitive operations from the UI before they execute
- **Session recovery**: restore work after process or server restarts
- **Dual-engine support**: works with both Claude Code and OpenAI Codex CLI
- **Background service**: can be installed as a system service (launchd on macOS, systemd on Linux)
- **Auth tokens**: auto-generated or manually managed authentication
## Architecture
```
Browser (React)
<-> ws://localhost:3456/ws/browser/:session
Companion server (Bun + Hono)
<-> ws://localhost:3456/ws/cli/:session
Claude Code / Codex CLI
```
- Built with Bun runtime and Hono web framework, frontend in React
- Communicates via WebSocket using the CLI `--sdk-url` path and NDJSON events
- Default port: 3456
- Docker images available
## Usage
```bash
bunx the-companion
# then open http://localhost:3456
```
Requires Bun + Claude Code and/or Codex CLI installed.
## Stats
2.3k GitHub stars, 281 forks, 163 releases.
## References
- https://github.com/The-Vibe-Company/companion
- https://thecompanion.sh
- https://www.npmjs.com/package/the-companion
## Related
- [[Claude Code]]
- [[Claude Code Web]]
- [[Claude Code Plugins]]
- [[OpenAI Codex]]
- [[Gemini CLI]]
- [[Vibe Coding]]
- [[Conductor]]