Clauster

Run Claude Code on your own server — and drive it from your phone.
Clauster is a self-hosted web dashboard that starts Claude Code sessions in any project directory on your homelab, NAS, or VPS. You attach from claude.ai/code or the Claude mobile app. No SSH session required.

Why not just SSH in and run claude?

	SSH + terminal	Clauster
From a phone	Type into a mobile SSH client	Tap a project in a browser, then use the Claude app
When you close the laptop	Session dies with the shell	Session keeps running on the host; reattach later
Starting a session	cd to the project, remember the flags	One click per project, spawn + permission modes preset

If you already live in a terminal on the same machine as your code, you don't need this. Clauster is for when your code lives on a box you don't want to SSH into every time.

Quick start

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/schubydoo/clauster/main/install.sh | bash
clauster run

Open http://127.0.0.1:7621 — run with no config and Clauster serves a loopback-only first-run setup wizard that asks for your projects folder and a dashboard password, writes a clauster.yml, and starts on it. Then click Run Claude here on a project. Full recipes (uv / pip, Docker, systemd, reverse proxy) → Installation guide.

Status: 1.0 — stable and actively developed. Requires an Anthropic account with Claude Code access. Loopback-only by default; password and reverse-proxy auth are available for networked deployments (see Auth & networking). No telemetry, ever — see Privacy & data at rest for what Clauster keeps locally. Upgrading from 0.12? 1.0 has five breaking changes — see UPGRADING.md.

Light theme — running sessions on top, projects below	Dark theme — the toggle persists across reloads
Launch menu — pick how to drive it, and the permission mode	Create or clone — https/ssh only; cloning fetches files, runs nothing
Password login — for non-loopback / networked deploys	Every action is reactive — rows insert, badges flip, and clone progress streams without a full-page reload. Self-hosted assets; no CDN, no trackers.

Features

A self-hosted dashboard for the claude sessions running on your own machine — start them, watch them, and pick them up from your phone.

• Projects & bridges — a card per directory under projects_root; start, stop and resume bridges, choose the spawn and permission mode, and open any session in Claude by deep link or QR code.
• Visibility — live bridge-log tail over a WebSocket, a read-only transcript viewer, and per-project cost and token totals.
• In-app editing — edit a project's Claude Code config surfaces and an allowlist of operational clauster.yml settings, without reaching for SSH.
• Safety — workspace-trust prompts before a first spawn, session URLs redacted out of the streamed log (the on-disk bridge log stays verbatim unless you set logs.redact_session_url), and an auth model that fails closed on a network bind.
• Interactive Sessions — an opt-in pty mode with true resume and a read-only live terminal view.
• Extras — outbound notifications and webhooks, a Prometheus endpoint, a ghost-environment reaper, experimental background agents, and an MCP server (read-only until you opt into its write tools). Each is off, or read-only, by default.

That is the short list, not the whole of it — every feature is documented in full on the documentation site; start at the Quickstart or How it works.

Install

No Python needed — the install script grabs the signed standalone binary for your OS, verifies its checksum, and installs it to ~/.local/bin (Linux & macOS), printing a PATH hint if that directory isn't already on your PATH:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/schubydoo/clauster/main/install.sh | bash

On Windows, the PowerShell equivalent installs clauster.exe the same way:

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/schubydoo/clauster/main/install.ps1 | iex

Or pick another path — uv tool install clauster (recommended for a Python host), pip/pipx, Scoop on Windows (scoop bucket add clauster https://github.com/schubydoo/clauster && scoop install clauster), or Docker. Full recipes — including supply-chain verification — are in the Installation guide. To hack on Clauster itself, see Contributing below.

Uninstall

• Install script / standalone binary: remove ~/.local/bin/clauster on Linux or macOS; on Windows, delete %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\clauster\clauster.exe unless you set a custom install directory.
• Python tools: run uv tool uninstall clauster, pipx uninstall clauster, or pip uninstall clauster, matching how you installed it.
• Scoop: run scoop uninstall clauster.
• Docker: stop and remove the container with docker rm -f clauster, then remove the image with docker rmi ghcr.io/schubydoo/clauster:latest (substitute the pinned tag you pulled, e.g. :X.Y.Z, if you used a specific release) if you no longer need it. Docker Compose users: run docker compose down from the directory containing compose.yaml (add -v to also delete named volumes).
• Full purge: stop Clauster first, then remove your state_dir if you want local state/config gone too. See Privacy & data at rest and the Installation guide.

Contributing

Working on Clauster itself? CONTRIBUTING.md has the from-source dev setup (uv sync --extra dev), the local test/lint gates, and the branching + review workflow.

First bridge in 60 seconds

Start Clauster (run clauster; it serves http://127.0.0.1:7621 by default). With an authenticated claude on your PATH, spawning your first bridge is a handful of clicks — no terminal needed once it's started. Clauster spawns claude — it doesn't vendor it — and a spawned bridge inherits the host user's claude authentication, so claude must be logged in (interactive claude login or ANTHROPIC_API_KEY in the environment — either satisfies the check) before any bridge can connect. clauster doctor (step 2) confirms it; see the Quickstart prerequisites for the full list.

1. Point Clauster at your code. Set projects_root in clauster.yml to a directory whose subfolders are projects (e.g. ~/code); each child directory becomes a card.
2. Sanity-check the host (optional). clauster doctor confirms claude is found, new enough, and logged in (the bridge inherits this login), and that projects_root / the state dir are usable — fix any ✗ before spawning.
3. Open the dashboard at http://127.0.0.1:7621. You'll see one card per project to start — a project running several sessions later shows a card for each.
4. Launch a bridge. On a project's card, click Run Claude here ▾, choose In claude.ai / Desktop, pick a permission mode, then Run. Clauster launches claude remote-control in that directory and the card flips to Running with a live status badge. (The spawn-mode and permission defaults are safe out of the box.)
5. Attach from anywhere. Use the card's Open in Claude link — or scan its QR code — to pick the bridge up in claude.ai/code or the Claude mobile app. No SSH session.
6. Stop or resume. Stop signals the bridge; Resume relaunches it (with claude.resume_recap or claude.launch_mode: pty it can carry the prior conversation forward — see the configuration guide). For a deliberate fresh start, Forget the stopped session and launch again with Run Claude here.

Exposing this beyond loopback (e.g. on your LAN)? Read Auth & networking first — a non-loopback bind requires authentication.

Docker

Multi-arch images (linux/amd64, linux/arm64) are published to GHCR on each release, cosign-signed with provenance + SBOM attestations. Two things to know before docker run:

• The image binds 0.0.0.0, so it refuses to start without enforced auth — set CLAUSTER_AUTH_ENABLED=true, CLAUSTER_AUTH_PASSWORD_REQUIRED=true, and a CLAUSTER_AUTH_PASSWORD_HASH (generate one with docker run --rm -it ghcr.io/schubydoo/clauster:latest clauster hash-password).
• claude is not baked into the image — mount the CLI onto the container PATH (or set CLAUSTER_CLAUDE_BINARY) along with the runtime user's ~/.claude credentials.

Full run + compose.yaml recipes, volumes, and PUID/PGID mapping: Installation → Docker.

Auth & networking

Loopback (127.0.0.1) needs no auth. Binding to a non-loopback address is refused unless authentication is actually enforced — set auth.enabled: true (the master switch) together with either password login (auth.password_required + a hash from clauster hash-password) or reverse-proxy trust (peer-IP allowlist + HMAC header) — or, to opt out on a trusted LAN, auth.allow_unauthenticated_network. Sessions are signed cookies with server-side revocation ("log out everywhere"); WebSocket connections are authenticated before accept and origin-checked. The origin allowlist is a cross-site defence rather than an authentication method, so it is enforced even with auth.enabled: false; a non-loopback bind auto-trusts no origin and must set auth.allowed_origins.

Configuration

All settings live in clauster.yml — clauster.yml.example is a lean starter, and docs/reference/config.md is the exhaustive per-key reference. Any scalar or list key is overridable by an environment variable of the form CLAUSTER_<UPPER_SNAKE_PATH> (lists take a comma-separated value). The schema is additive-only — old configs always validate against newer versions.

Common flag	Default	What it does
host / port	127.0.0.1 / 7621	bind address (non-loopback needs auth)
projects_root	—	directory whose children become project cards
auth.enabled	false	master auth switch — must be on for password / proxy auth to apply
auth.password_required	false	require login (clauster hash-password for the hash)
claude.resume_recap	false	recap the prior transcript into a restarted bridge
claude.launch_mode	standard	pty = native true-resume on Resume (POSIX pty, or Windows ConPTY with the pty extra); default for new bridges only — a bridge keeps the mode it launched with
reaper.ui_enabled	false	expose the ghost-environment reaper in the dashboard
claustrum.enabled	false	enable the hosted live-view channel (connect-or-spawn the claustrum daemon)
usage.mode	cost	per-project badge contents: cost (≈USD + tokens) · tokens (count only) · off (hide + skip the usage fetch). usage.show_cost: false is a deprecated alias for off
logs.redact_session_url	false	redact the session URL on disk too, not just over WS

CLI

clauster run                  # start the server (default)
clauster hash-password        # generate an argon2id hash for auth.password_hash
clauster hash-token           # mint an API token + hash for auth.api_token_hash
clauster hash-metrics-token   # mint a /metrics scrape token + hash for observability.metrics_token_hash
clauster api-token issue|list|rotate|revoke   # manage named public-API bearer tokens
clauster mcp                  # read-only MCP server over stdio (list + status)
clauster doctor               # diagnose config / environment
clauster backup | restore | migrate
clauster install-service {systemd|launchd|windows}
clauster reap-environments    # reap ghost bridge environments (dry-run by default)
clauster keepers              # list or stop orphaned pty keepers
clauster usage <transcript>   # token + approximate cost for a session transcript
clauster config reconcile     # remove deprecated config keys, writing their replacements
clauster deps list|install|uninstall          # manage optional extras beside the standalone binary
clauster projects | status | sessions         # headless reads (--json), no server needed
clauster logs <instance> | open <instance>    # tail a bridge's redacted log / print its connect URL
clauster start <project> | stop <instance>    # headless spawn/stop through the same engine as the UI
#   <instance> = full id, a unique prefix of one (as printed by `status`), or a project name

Full per-command reference: docs/reference/cli.md.

Roadmap

Planned work, roughly in priority order — the public-facing companion to the in-repo scratch/TODO.md.

• Friendlier default session names — Server-Mode bridges already accept a custom launch name (#780) and the dashboard lists active/resumable sessions per project; the remaining work is a more predictable default than the random adjective-noun one, and extending custom names to Interactive Sessions.

Not planned: clauster is a single-operator tool — multi-user accounts, OIDC login, and per-user GDPR tooling were considered and declined (one deployment serves one operator; isolate with separate instances instead). The UI is English-only and not localized — there is no i18n string extraction on the roadmap (re-scope only if a real translation contributor appears).

Shipped:

• Public API — a documented, versioned /api/v1 surface with named Bearer tokens (distinct from the session cookie), managed via clauster api-token issue|list|rotate|revoke; an opt-in OpenAPI schema (api.openapi_enabled) is available for third-party dashboards.
• The in-repo docs/ pages (setup, networking, config reference, security model) are published as a live docs site at schubydoo.github.io/clauster.

Stack

Python 3.11+ · FastAPI · Alpine.js + Jinja2 + Tabler · uv · pydantic. Developed and CI-gated on Linux; macOS / Windows are in the test matrix. Apache-2.0 licensed.

Project health

Support

Questions, bugs, and feature requests all go through GitHub Issues — Discussions are intentionally not enabled. See SUPPORT.md for how to get help, and SECURITY.md to report a vulnerability privately.

License

Apache License 2.0.