aipager

Telegram remote-control for Claude Code CLI sessions. Run Claude inside a detached terminal (dtach), drive it from your phone — read responses, send prompts, approve permission requests, switch sessions — without an SSH session staying open.

Docs · Changelog · Issues

Install

Linux or macOS, any architecture. dtach is installed automatically via the dtach-bin dependency — no separate system package needed.

One-line install (recommended)

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dev-aly3n/aipager/main/install.sh | sh

This auto-detects uv / pipx / brew and uses whichever is already on your system. If none is present, it bootstraps uv (Astral's Python tool manager) and installs through it.

uv (recommended on macOS)

uv tool install aipager     # if uv is already installed

— or to install uv first:

curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh
uv tool install aipager

uv bundles its own Python interpreter, so this works on any macOS / Linux version regardless of what system Python is doing — it sidesteps the Homebrew-Python-vs-Xcode breakage described under the Homebrew section below.

pipx

pipx install aipager

Homebrew tap (macOS, Linuxbrew)

Note: uv tool install aipager is the recommended path on macOS. The brew formula works when Homebrew's python@3.12 bottle and your Xcode / Command Line Tools are in sync, but they periodically drift apart — most recently on macOS Tahoe (26.x), where install fails with a pyexpat _XML_SetAllocTrackerActivationThreshold symbol error (upstream issue). Updating Xcode + Command Line Tools usually fixes it, but it's easier to just use uv.

brew install dev-aly3n/tap/aipager

Pulls dtach from Homebrew's standard formula and installs aipager into a Homebrew-managed Python venv.

Docker

Self-contained image with python, node, claude and dtach baked in — good for VPS / NAS / Pi deployments where you don't want a Python or Node toolchain on the host. Multi-arch (amd64, arm64).

# 1. Run the setup wizard once (interactive)
docker run --rm -it \
  -v "$HOME/.claude:/home/aipager/.claude" \
  -v aipager-config:/home/aipager/.config/aipager \
  ghcr.io/dev-aly3n/aipager:latest config

# 2. Start the daemon (background, auto-restart)
docker run -d --restart=unless-stopped --name aipager \
  -v "$HOME/.claude:/home/aipager/.claude" \
  -v aipager-config:/home/aipager/.config/aipager \
  -v "$PWD:/workspace" \
  ghcr.io/dev-aly3n/aipager:latest

Mount the directories you want claude to edit under /workspace. The ~/.claude mount carries over your claude credentials and conversation history — run claude on the host once to authenticate, or docker exec -it aipager claude for an interactive login in the container.

Tags: latest, 0.4, 0.4.13 (semver track + minor track).

Nix flake

nix run github:dev-aly3n/aipager -- --version
nix profile install github:dev-aly3n/aipager

Builds aipager from source against pinned nixpkgs deps. dtach is provided by Nix; claude is not — install it separately (nix profile install nixpkgs#nodejs && npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code, or follow Anthropic's docs).

For declarative NixOS / Home Manager configs, add aipager as a flake input and pick its package up from environment.systemPackages:

{
  inputs.aipager.url = "github:dev-aly3n/aipager";

  outputs = { self, nixpkgs, aipager, ... }: {
    nixosConfigurations.myhost = nixpkgs.lib.nixosSystem {
      modules = [{
        environment.systemPackages = [
          aipager.packages.${pkgs.system}.default
        ];
      }];
    };
  };
}

aipager service install will then wire up a systemd-user unit.

Group mode (multi-user)

aipager runs by default as a 1:1 DM bot. To run it in a Telegram group with multiple devs (mention @aipagerbot deploy, @aipagerbot /jim run the tests), re-run aipager config and pick Team at the mode prompt. You'll set up an allow-list of Telegram user IDs and roles (admin / developer / read_only) plus optional deny_tools rules that auto-block dangerous tool calls. Adding a user grants them code-execution rights on the host — see docs/groups.md for the full trust model.

AUR (Arch Linux)

yay -S aipager           # or paru, pikaur — any AUR helper

System dtach and python-telegram-bot come from pacman; install the Anthropic claude CLI separately (sudo pacman -S npm && sudo npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code). PKGBUILD lives at packaging/aur/ for review.

Snap

snap install aipager

Strict-confinement snap that bundles python + node + claude + dtach + aipager. Because of snap's sandbox model, workspaces must live under ~/ (e.g. ~/projects/foo). Manifest at packaging/snap/.

Configure

aipager config

Interactive wizard — asks for your Telegram bot token (from @BotFather) and chat ID, validates them, then patches ~/.claude/settings.json to wire the necessary hooks automatically. You never edit any file by hand.

Run

aipager start

The daemon stays in the foreground. Launch a Claude session in another terminal:

aipager session dev

This creates (or reattaches to) a dtach session named claude-dev running Claude Code. The aipager daemon discovers it within seconds and Telegram starts mirroring it. Re-run the same command to reattach later; detach with Ctrl-\.

If the dtach session was killed (machine reboot, etc.) but you want to pick up the Claude conversation from disk, add --resume:

aipager session dev --resume    # resume the last claude conversation in this cwd

You can also pass --resume <session-id> (or any other claude flag) through as trailing args:

aipager session dev -- --resume abc1234

Run as a service (survives logout)

aipager service install

On Linux this writes a systemd-user unit at ~/.config/systemd/user/aipager.service and starts it. On macOS it writes a launchd plist at ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.aipager.daemon.plist and bootstraps it. Subcommands: start, stop, status, logs, uninstall.

What it does

• Mirrors Claude Code session state to Telegram: busy/idle, tool calls, context %, cost, line counts
• Lets you reply to messages to inject prompts back into the session
• Surfaces permission prompts and AskUserQuestion dialogs as Telegram inline keyboards
• Notifies on context warnings, compaction, session end, and stalls
• Supports multiple concurrent sessions with one bot
• Optional read-only observer bots

Note on model buttons (Bedrock / Vertex users)

The persistent keyboard's Model submenu sends /model sonnet, /model opus, /model haiku, and /model opusplan — Claude Code's aliases. On the Anthropic API these resolve to the latest in each family (currently Opus 4.7, Sonnet 4.6, Haiku 4.5). On Bedrock and Vertex the same aliases may resolve to older snapshots depending on your provider's available versions. If you target those backends and want a specific model, tap the alias as a starting point, then /model <full-id> from chat.

Developing locally

git clone <repo-url> aipager && cd aipager
python3 -m venv .venv && source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e '.[dev]'
pytest -q

When iterating on code changes you'll generally want to also install dtach-bin from a local checkout — or pip install dtach-bin — so the runtime can find dtach on PATH.

Release process is in CONTRIBUTING.md.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.