Use at your own risk. This package and repository exist for educational purposes and demonstrates why client-side restrictions on how a product is used are fundamentally unenforceable.

A drop-in replacement for claude -p that drives the interactive claude UI inside an in-process zmux PTY session.

Built using smithers self-improving harness

npx claude-p "your prompt here"

Output on stdout matches claude -p byte-for-byte.

npx claude-p --output-format json "summarize this commit" < commit.diff
npx claude-p --output-format stream-json "audit src/" --verbose | jq .
npx claude-p --model opus "explain quicksort to a 10-year-old"

1. Spawns claude interactively inside a zmux NativeSession (a real PTY with a reader thread and bounded scrollback).
2. A small ANSI scanner answers the DA1 / DA2 / DSR / XTVERSION / window-size queries Ink (the React-for-terminals runtime Claude Code uses) issues at startup. Without these, the TUI hangs.
3. Registers two hooks via --settings '<inline-json>' — never touches your ~/.claude/ config:
   • SessionStart — the wrapper types the prompt + Enter.
   • Stop — fires when the model finishes; payload carries transcript_path.
4. Reads the transcript JSONL, extracts the final assistant message plus usage, and prints in the requested format.

--output-format <text|json|stream-json>   default: text
--model <name>
--max-turns <N>
--allowedTools <list>
--dangerously-skip-permissions
--resume <id> | --continue | --session-id <uuid>
--cwd <path>
--input-file <path>
--verbose
--timeout <seconds>                       default: 300
--debug

Unrecognized flags are forwarded verbatim to claude.

• macOS / Linux only. No Windows (no forkpty).
• Requires claude on $PATH. The wrapper invokes the real CLI.
• Not true streaming. Tokens are not streamed live — claude-p waits for the model's turn to finish and then prints. For real-time streaming, use claude -p --output-format stream-json directly.
• Adds ~50–200 ms over claude -p due to PTY + Ink startup overhead.
• Multiline prompts must come via --input-file or stdin to keep shell escaping sane.
• API instability. claude is not designed to be driven this way. A future Claude Code release that changes the hook payload schema or adds a new terminal probe at startup can break us; the wrapper will surface the failure rather than hide it.

git clone https://github.com/smithersai/claude-p
cd claude-p
zig build -Doptimize=ReleaseSafe

Requires Zig 0.15.2. Dependencies are fetched by zig build.

zig fetch --save=claude_p git+https://github.com/smithersai/claude-p

const std = @import("std");
const claude_p = @import("claude_p");

pub fn main() !void {
    var gpa: std.heap.GeneralPurposeAllocator(.{}) = .{};
    defer _ = gpa.deinit();
    const alloc = gpa.allocator();

    var result = try claude_p.run(alloc, .{
        .prompt = "what is the capital of France?",
        .output_format = .text,
        .skip_permissions = true,
    });
    defer result.deinit(alloc);

    std.debug.print("{s}\n", .{result.summary.final_text});
}

The Options struct mirrors the CLI flags 1:1. See src/root.zig and SPEC.md for the full API.

MIT.