[opensourcedex]

claude-share is a free, open source collaboration & communication project written in TypeScript and released under MIT. It has 549 GitHub stars, 5 forks and 3 open issues, and was last pushed 10 hours ago. On this registry it ranks #58 of 61 tracked projects in Collaboration & Communication, with 5 head-to-head comparisons available.

What is claude-share?

claude-share is an MIT-licensed Claude Code plugin, written in TypeScript, that turns one developer's Claude Code session into a shared room, so a host can send a link and a teammate can join from their own Claude Code to see the same prompts, streamed replies, tool results and previews.

What it is

claude-share lives in the Claude Code plugin ecosystem. It is distributed through a plugin marketplace (Paradigm-Study/claude-share) and installed as shared-session@claude-share, and it works in both Claude Desktop and the terminal. The host's machine does the work: guest prompts run on the host in turn and the guest's model is not called. A public room server is included, and an operator can run a self-hosted one instead.

The problem it solves is the private session. A developer running Claude Code holds a transcript of prompts, replies, tool cards and changed files that a colleague cannot see, and the usual workaround is to open a second session and rebuild the same context. claude-share lets a teammate join the ongoing session with its shared history and ask Claude to investigate the same code, so both people review one stream of work instead of two divergent ones. Sharing by link needs no separate Shared Sessions account; normal Claude authentication still applies.

Key capabilities

  • Sharing commands: the host presses Share above the prompt or types /share-session and copies the link, and /stop-sharing ends the room for everyone.
  • A shared view: guests see the host's prompts, streamed replies, tool cards, changed files and supported previews in their own session.
  • Permission gating: by default a guest's request to edit, run commands or use the network asks the host first, and a watch-only mode is available.
  • A room panel via /room for participants, the timeline of turns, files Claude changed, side chat and host controls, alongside /who, reactions on replies, read receipts and @name mentions.
  • Preview sharing: /share-preview with a port exposes a local dev server, and the plugin also asks about other web servers the project runs — a backend on 3510 and 3511, say — at most three ports per question; guests press Open preview.
  • Optional teams via /team add sign-in, live session lists and invitations inside Claude Code.

Who uses it and how

  • Pairs on a real task: a teammate joins an ongoing session with its shared history and asks Claude to investigate the same code rather than starting over.
  • Review sessions: several people follow the host's replies, tool cards and changed files, react to replies and @-mention each other in the transcript.
  • Front-end review: the host shares a running dev server and guests open the preview next to the conversation that produced it.
  • Self-hosting operators: the optional share-server setting can point at a server they run instead of the public one.

Getting started

Install with the marketplace commands claude plugin marketplace add Paradigm-Study/claude-share and claude plugin install shared-session@claude-share, on Claude Code 2.1.286 or newer. On macOS with an older terminal CLI, the repository also offers node scripts/setup.mjs join, which locates the newer Claude Code bundled with Desktop when Git and Node 20+ are present.

How it compares

No paid products or comparable tools are named in the facts for this entry, so claude-share stands alone in this registry as a Claude Code plugin for shared sessions. It is MIT-licensed and self-hostable at the room-server level, which is the axis on which it would normally be weighed against a hosted collaboration product.

When to use it — and when not to

Choose it when both people already work in Claude Code and the aim is to review one session together instead of exchanging transcripts; anyone joining needs Claude Code 2.1.286 or newer and this plugin, and unless the public room server is used, someone has to operate the room server. Anything shared passes through that server, so teams with strict data-handling rules should read the privacy notes on what it sees and keeps before inviting anyone. It is a small project — 549 stars, 5 forks and 3 open issues at the time of writing — and the setup script can halt at a NEEDS HUMAN step that must be completed by hand, so it suits developers comfortable installing plugins rather than teams wanting a turnkey hosted product.

project readme (upstream, from github) — read inline

Shared Sessions for Claude Code

Work in the same Claude session with your team. Share a link, let a teammate join from their own Claude Code, and see each other's prompts, streamed replies and tool results. The host's machine does the work.

Install · Try a first session · Full guide · Contribute

A teammate's invitation above the composer in Claude Desktop

Watch the 90-second demo on X or download the 8-second invitation clip. The clip shows an invitation arriving in Claude Desktop. Recorded with fictional teammates; demo details and music credit.

  • Pair on a real task. A teammate joins your ongoing session with its shared history, then asks Claude to investigate the same code.
  • Review the result together. See the host's replies, tool cards, files and supported previews in your own session.
  • Keep control of your machine. By default, a guest's request to edit, run commands or use the network asks the host first. Watch-only mode is available.
  • Find your team. Optional teams add sign-in, live session lists and invitations inside Claude Code.

Works in Claude Desktop and the terminal. A public room server is included, or you can run your own.

Install

Both people need a working Claude Code installation and this plugin. Requires Claude Code 2.1.286+. Check with claude --version; if your terminal copy is older, use claude update or the setup option below. Your normal Claude authentication still applies; sharing by link needs no separate Shared Sessions account.

In a terminal with a supported Claude Code version:

claude plugin marketplace add Paradigm-Study/claude-share
claude plugin install shared-session@claude-share

Leave the optional share-server setting empty to use the public server. Start a new session after installing. Quit and reopen Claude Desktop to load the plugin into sessions already open.

Have Desktop but an older terminal CLI? With Git and Node 20+ installed, the setup script can find the newer Claude Code bundled with Desktop on macOS:

git clone https://github.com/Paradigm-Study/claude-share.git
cd claude-share
node scripts/setup.mjs join

Despite the command name, join installs the plugin for both sharing and joining. It also enables automatic marketplace updates and the function-hooks switch needed on 2.1.285. Read its NOTE lines; if it prints NEEDS HUMAN, complete that step and rerun the command. More setup and update options.

Use it

Try this with a new session in a scratch project:

  1. Host: press Share above the prompt, or type /share-session. Copy the link.
  2. Teammate: paste the link into a fresh Claude Code session and send it. Opening the link in a browser can open a Desktop session with the link prefilled; press Enter there.
  3. Either person: ask Claude to read the project's README. Both sessions should show the prompt, reply and tool results. Guest prompts run on the host in turn; the guest's model is not called.
  4. Host: type /stop-sharing when done. The room ends for everyone.

Sharing a session with existing history asks whether to include it. Choose Only from now on or /share-session new to leave earlier messages out. Anything you share passes through the room server; read what it sees and keeps.

Use /room for people, the timeline of turns, the files Claude changed, side chat and host controls, and /who for who's here. In the transcript, react to Claude's replies, see who has seen each, and @name a teammate. Use /team for optional teams. To let teammates open a local dev server, run /share-preview on the host; the plugin also asks about the other web servers the same project runs (a backend on 3510 and 3511, say), one server at a time (three ports a question at most), for the host to share with a click each. Guests press Open preview, and the page opens at the host's own address (http://localhost:3000), so OAuth callbacks and hard-coded 127.0.0.1 backends work. When those port numbers are free on the guest's machine, the page opens there, as VS Code's port forwarding does: in Claude's browser in Claude Desktop, in the guest's own browser in a terminal (Room → Settings → Previews changes it). When one is taken, it opens in a separate browser window instead (Chrome, Edge, Brave, Chromium, Firefox 140+, Vivaldi or Opera, on macOS and Linux), so the guest's own servers on those ports are untouched. Close in Room → Shown, or the host's Stop of that preview, frees the ports again. Previews require Node 20+, POSIX sh and the host's live curl stream. Commands and supported previews.

Keep it running in the cloud. Room → Settings → Move to cloud hands your session's host to a Claude Code the room server runs in a container, so teammates keep working while your computer sleeps. It signs in as you (a token from claude setup-token, copied once and kept on your computer). Every call a teammate's prompt makes, and anything of its localhost before it's shared, asks you first, above the prompt and in the Room wherever you are, and the Room's settings stay yours to change. Bring home takes the session back here with the cloud's changes to your files. How it works.

Privacy and the public server

The default server is claude-share.proud-limit-da0a.workers.dev, run by this project. It receives the shared transcript, tool results, side chat, reactions to replies and who has seen each, and shared files. Messages between a guest's own other sessions and the host's session pass through it to the other side alone and are never kept. Traffic is encrypted in transit, not end to end. Anyone with a room link can join unless access is restricted to a team.

Rooms and their files are deleted 24 hours after the host stops sharing or was last seen, and a room keeps only its newest 5,000 events, 16 MB of them at most. Previews keep a little with the room until then: a forwarded preview and coarse connection and traffic counters (its connections keep nothing, and close when that person leaves or the host stops the preview); a preview opened through its link, that link for 10 minutes and the browser session it starts for 12 hours from the last link that browser opened, or until that person leaves or the host stops the preview (at most 4 sessions per seat and preview, and a room's newest 128 links and 256 sessions; a seat is one person's session in the room). A link or session that expired is removed at the room's next activity, or with the room; one that ended goes at once. Application bytes are relayed, never stored, and there are no analytics or request logs. To count the rooms each network makes in a day, the Cloudflare server keeps a hash of each new room's network address, keyed by a random key made for that day, with that count, until the day (UTC) ends. A session moved to the cloud sends its project's files, its conversation and its host's Claude token to a container the server starts for that room; the server passes them on and keeps none of them, and the container, with everything in it, is deleted when the session comes home, the room ends, or a week after the move. Its changes are kept as a room file for Bring home, deleted with the room. Team accounts and settings persist until account deletion. Signing in finishes only when you press Continue on the server's page, which shows the same code as Claude Code; until you press Continue, the server keeps who GitHub or Google said you are, and after ten minutes that sign-in stops working and is deleted. The server keeps only a hash of Claude Code's token, never the token.

Every session's previews share one preview host name, and their links name the session by a key of its own, which can't join it. A browser not already in a session's previews has that host name's storage and cache, and its domain's cookies, cleared before it enters (browsers clear them only over HTTPS, or on localhost), and no preview can register a service worker there. That can't stop a page that's still open: a preview page of one session left open in a browser can reach the previews of a session that browser opens after it, so close one you don't trust first, or use a server whose previews each have a host name of their own (how). A guest's preview window keeps its sign-ins in a local profile: one per host who is signed in, kept between that host's sessions and deleted after 30 days unused; otherwise one per room, deleted when they leave. The public service has limits, including 20 people, 100 MB of files (10,240 at most), 128 open previews and events of 128 KB each per room, and for a preview's link 512 waiting requests per room, 32 WebSockets per seat and 8 MB waiting for the host per room; a room sends out at most 8 GB a day of its files and preview answers, 256 MB a minute to any one seat; a WebSocket closes once 1 MB it sent waits unread (on Cloudflare, once one side sends more than 4 MB in a second). Full data, retention and access details.

Host a server

Sharing by link works with the public server. Teams that want their own infrastructure can use a Cloudflare Worker or the Node server:

node scripts/setup.mjs deploy

Run that from a clone with Node 20+; Cloudflare account setup and browser authorization need a person. For an existing server, use node scripts/setup.mjs host --server https://your-server. Cloudflare, Node and team sign-in setup.

Troubleshooting

  • No Share button or unknown command: start a new session, or quit and reopen Desktop. The session may have started before installation.
  • hooks: Invalid input: check claude --version. Use the setup script above if Desktop has a newer copy than your terminal.
  • A pasted link gets an ordinary Claude reply: the plugin is not loaded in that session. Restart after installing and paste the link into a fresh session.
  • Check the installation: from a clone, run node scripts/setup.mjs check. Add --live to test sharing, resuming, stopping and joining with temporary sessions through the selected server.

More troubleshooting · Report a reproducible bug

Security model

The host executes the work. Guests see replayed tool cards; those cards do not run the host's commands on their machines. A guest's other Claude sessions on the same computer can message the host's Claude through the joined session (SendMessage to it), and the host's Claude's SendMessage answer goes back to that session alone. Claude Code treats these as messages between any two sessions at both ends: the host's permission mode, not the approval a teammate's prompt asks for, decides what such a message may run, a message from a session in another permission mode class (bypass against the others) waits until its person lets it in, and loops between sessions are cut. Host approval rules govern guest requests, agents a guest's prompt starts included; a call that can't be put to the host, or goes unanswered, is declined. Room links grant access, and the relay server can read shared content. Permissions, files and preview boundaries.

Limits

Guests see the first 40 lines of each tool result. Subagents' inner steps are not mirrored. Some viewers and session-list features are Desktop-only; terminal guests receive files or links. Local previews need the host's session and dev server to stay open. Compatibility and resource limits.

Develop

The plugin is in plugin/; shared room logic is in server/core.mjs. CONTRIBUTING.md covers local development and tests. AGENTS.md records the engine contracts and release procedure.

If you use Shared Sessions, a star helps other developers find it. Bug reports with the versions and steps to reproduce help us improve it.

License

MIT. The Paradigm name, logo and Clover character remain trademarks of Paradigm Study. Demo music has separate attribution terms.

Frequently asked questions

Is claude-share free to use?

claude-share is open source under the MIT licence. There is no licence fee and no seat count — you can self-host it or, where the project offers one, pay a vendor for a managed version instead.

What does claude-share do?

Multiplayer sessions for Claude Code. Share a link, work together live, and review the same replies, tools and previews.

What is claude-share written in?

claude-share is primarily written in TypeScript. Its source is publicly available at https://github.com/Paradigm-Study/claude-share, and it has 549 GitHub stars.