ClaudeDeck

A minimalist Windows dashboard to keep an eye on all your running Claude Code sessions at a glance — and jump straight to the right editor window.

When you juggle several very different projects, two costs pile up: knowing which session needs you, and reloading context when you switch. ClaudeDeck shows every open Claude Code session in one place — whether Claude is working, waiting for you, or done, with the last prompt for each — and lets you click to focus the exact VS Code / Cursor window. It lives in your system tray, with a large always-on-top overview that pops up whenever a task finishes.

No Node, no Python, no dependencies — just PowerShell and a few Claude Code hooks.

Features

See everything at a glance

• System-tray icon — click for a compact list of your sessions.
• Large centered overview — a big, readable panel (great on 4K) that pops up automatically when a task finishes, or on demand. Auto-fits its height to the number of sessions; flicker-free (only repaints when something actually changes).
• Three live states — a spinning indicator while Claude works, 🟠 waiting for you (permission / question), ⚪ finished — each with the last prompt and elapsed time. Sessions that need you sort to the top and breathe orange, so you never miss a blocked one.
• Per-project badge — a stable colour + the project initials in a square badge at the start of each row (and a colour swatch in the tray menu), so different repos are instantly recognisable.

Know what just happened

• "Who just finished?" highlight — when the overview pops up, the row of the session that just completed pulses green for a moment.
• Unopened-completion border — a finished session you haven't opened yet gets a subtle blue outline; it clears the moment you click the row.

Track your activity

• Statistics dashboard — a dark, 4K-friendly panel (tray menu → Show statistics) with three summary cards (today, this week, streak), a 14-day activity chart (today's bar in green), and your top projects this week ranked by focus time, each with its project badge and a proportional bar.
• Focus time — measured from each prompt to the matching completion, so you can see how long Claude actually worked, per day and per project.
• Private and local — a tiny append-only log (~/.claude/sessions/stats/events.jsonl) populated by the same hooks; nothing leaves your machine, and entries older than 90 days are pruned automatically.

Act fast

• Click to focus — clicking a session brings its VS Code / Cursor window to the front, without resizing or moving it.
• Global hotkey — Win+Alt+C opens/focuses the overview from anywhere (configurable; falls back automatically if the combo is taken).
• Follows you across virtual desktops — the overview appears on whichever Windows virtual desktop you're on (uses only the documented IVirtualDesktopManager API, so it won't break on Windows updates).
• Pinned to the primary monitor — always shows on the screen with the taskbar, never drifts to a second monitor.

Screenshots

Add your screenshots here (docs/tray.png, docs/overview.png).

Requirements

• Windows 10 / 11
• Windows PowerShell 5.1 (built in) or PowerShell 7
• Claude Code
• VS Code and/or Cursor (the click-to-focus targets their windows)

Install

One file, one click (recommended)

1. Download ClaudeDeck-Setup.cmd (the button above downloads it directly).
2. Double-click it.

That's it. It's a single self-contained file — every script is embedded inside it, so there's nothing else to download and it works offline. No Node, no Python, no git.

First run: Windows may show "Windows protected your PC" (SmartScreen) or a "Do you want to run this file?" prompt, because the file isn't code-signed. Click More info → Run anyway (or Run). You can inspect the file in any text editor first — it's plain text.

From source (developers)

git clone https://github.com/hydropix/claude-deck.git
cd claude-deck
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\install.ps1

Maintainers: ClaudeDeck-Setup.cmd is generated from install.ps1 + scripts/. After changing either, regenerate it with powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\tools\build-setup.ps1 (and optionally verify the embed with .\tools\verify-bundle.ps1), then commit the updated .cmd.

What the installer does (either way)

1. Copy the scripts to %USERPROFILE%\.claude\sessions\.
2. Merge the required hooks into %USERPROFILE%\.claude\settings.json (idempotent — it backs up the file first and never removes your existing hooks).
3. Create a Startup shortcut (tray launches at logon) and a Desktop shortcut for the large view.
4. Start the tray immediately.

The tray icon may land in the hidden-icons area on Windows 11 — click the ^ chevron near the clock, then drag it onto the taskbar to pin it.

Usage

• Tray icon → click for the compact session list; click a row to focus that session's editor window.
• Large view → opens automatically when a task finishes, or via the global hotkey Win+Alt+C, the ClaudeDeck (Large) desktop shortcut, or the tray menu Show large view. Close it with Esc or the ✕.

Options

Options live in the tray menu (state stored as small files under ~/.claude/sessions/):

Option	Default	Effect
Do not disturb	off	Suspends the auto-popup of the large view on task completion.
Close on outside click	off	When on, the overview also closes on a click anywhere outside it (0.5s grace to avoid accidental closes). Esc / ✕ always work.
Transparency	Light (92 %)	Sets the overview window opacity: None / Light / Medium / Strong (100 / 92 / 80 / 65 %). Applied live.
Size	Normal (55 %)	Sets the overview width: Compact / Normal / Wide / Extra wide (42 / 55 / 68 / 82 % of screen width). Applied live.
Automatic updates	off	When on, ClaudeDeck checks the latest GitHub release about once an hour for a newer version. See Updates.

Position: the overview header has three buttons next to ✕ — ▲ (top), ▬ (center), ▼ (bottom) — to dock the window to the top, middle, or bottom of the primary screen. The active one is highlighted; the choice is remembered.

Change the hotkey: edit $HotMods / $HotVk near the bottom of scripts/session-tray.ps1 (the modifier/virtual-key tables are in the comments). The Windows key alone is mostly reserved by the OS, so Win+Alt+<key> is the reliable space.

Updates

ClaudeDeck can keep itself up to date from this GitHub repo — opt-in, and off by default.

• Turn it on with the tray menu Automatic updates (or check on demand with Check for updates).
• When enabled, the tray compares the installed version (~/.claude/sessions/version.txt) with the tag of the latest GitHub release, about once an hour. Using published releases (not the main branch) means the updater only ever sees what was explicitly shipped. The check runs in a hidden background process, so it never blocks the UI; if you're offline it simply does nothing.
• If a newer version exists you get a tray balloon and an Install update (vX) entry at the top of the menu. Clicking it downloads that release's ClaudeDeck-Setup.cmd asset and runs it — the same idempotent installer, so it refreshes the scripts, re-merges hooks, and restarts the tray (in a detached worker, so the update completes even though it restarts the app).
• The current version is always shown at the bottom of the tray menu.

The updater lives in scripts/session-update.ps1. Forking? Change the $Owner / $Repo variables at the top so it reads your own repo's latest GitHub release.

Maintainers: the version number comes from the latest git tag — that's the single source of truth, and the updater reads GitHub Releases, so publishing the release is mandatory (a tag/push alone ships nothing to clients). To cut one:

git tag v1.1.0
powershell -File .\tools\build-setup.ps1          # writes scripts/version.txt from the tag + regenerates ClaudeDeck-Setup.cmd
powershell -File .\tools\verify-bundle.ps1         # expect "--- ALL MATCH ---"
git add scripts/version.txt ClaudeDeck-Setup.cmd
git commit -m "Release v1.1.0: regenerate version.txt and installer from tag"
git tag -f v1.1.0                                  # move the tag onto the release commit
git push origin main && git push origin v1.1.0
gh release create v1.1.0 ClaudeDeck-Setup.cmd --title "ClaudeDeck v1.1.0" --notes "..."

A tracked pre-commit hook (tools/git-hooks/pre-commit) regenerates and verifies ClaudeDeck-Setup.cmd on every scripts/ change, so the single-file installer can never drift from the sources. Enable it once per clone with powershell -File .\tools\install-hooks.ps1.

How it works

A few Claude Code hooks write a tiny JSON state file per session under ~/.claude/sessions/state/:

Hook	Action
UserPromptSubmit	mark the session running + record the prompt
Notification	mark the session waiting when Claude needs a permission/approval
Stop	mark the session done + pop the large overview (unless DND)
SessionEnd	remove the session

Two PowerShell apps read those files:

• session-tray.ps1 — the tray icon, compact menu, global hotkey, and reminders.
• session-view.ps1 — the large always-on-top overview.

Clicking a session resolves the matching IDE window by its title (e.g. … - MyProject - Visual Studio Code) and brings it to the foreground; if no window matches, it falls back to opening the folder in the real VS Code.

Uninstall

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\uninstall.ps1

Removes the scripts, the shortcuts, and the ClaudeDeck hooks from settings.json (leaving your other hooks intact).

Notes & limitations

• Hooks use Claude Code's "shell": "powershell" option.
• The waiting state is detected from permission/approval notifications; idle and auth notifications are ignored.
• Click-to-focus matches the project folder name in the window title; sessions opened directly in your home folder may not match (no folder name in the title).
• The large view "follows" you to the active virtual desktop within ~350 ms of switching.
• Per-project colours come from a hash of the project name, so two names can occasionally land on a similar hue.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.