macOS-App CLI Manager überwacht Claude Code, Codex CLI und Gemini CLI nebeneinander

I build CLI Manager, a macOS app for running Claude Code, Codex CLI and Gemini CLI side by side. This year I made it free and open source (MIT), and added the feature I now use every day: Claude Code can drive the app itself.

In the video, Claude Code loads a skill, opens one Claude session per repo, hands out the tasks, waits for them and reports back in a table. Every session it opens shows up in the sidebar in green, so I can click into any of them and take over.

You don't need my app for this. It is two pieces:

The agent gets a way to delegate work. I keep a window into everything it delegated.

The API is off by default. You turn it on in Settings › Agents › AI Control API. The app then listens on 127.0.0.1:47821 only and writes the address and a token to ~/.climanager/control-api.json (mode 600, removed when the app quits).

The skill wraps the API in a small CLI that the agent calls:

node " $CLI " open ~/code/my-project --template claude-code \ --name "AI: fix failing test" --prompt "fix the failing test" node " $CLI " wait last --timeout 300 # wait until idle, print the screen node " $CLI " read last --tail --lines 120 # include scrollback node " $CLI " release last # hand it back to me; the session keeps running Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode The exit codes carry the meaning, so the agent branches on them instead of on wording. 3 means a question or a menu is on screen. 7 means the wait timed out but the session is still running, which is not a failure.

If you prefer MCP, the app serves the same actions there too ( open_session, send_input, wait_for_idle, read_output and a few more).

About two thirds of the recent commits in the repo are co-authored with Claude Code, including most of this API.

If you build the same pattern on another terminal or OS, I would love to see it.

This post was written with AI assistance and reviewed by me.