# Getting notified when Claude Code needs you

Claude Code can run for twenty minutes and then sit waiting for one word from you. Shiplings watches that with a hook and calls you when it happens, without a window, a dashboard or a browser tab.

*Updated 24 September 2026. Canonical: https://shiplings.app/claude-code-notifications.html*

## The problem is not that it is slow

A long generation is fine. What costs you the afternoon is the gap between the moment an agent stops and the moment you notice it stopped. You alt-tab back every ninety seconds to check, which is the interruption you were trying to avoid, or you forget for twenty minutes and the agent has been idle for nineteen of them.

## How Shiplings knows

Claude Code writes hooks: small commands it runs at defined moments in its own lifecycle. Shiplings installs them in one click and listens on a local socket. Nothing polls, nothing is scraped, and there is no delay to tune.

| What happens | What you see |
| --- | --- |
| The agent starts working | The character gets to work. No sound, no window. |
| It asks a question or hits a permission prompt | The character calls you by name of project and agent. |
| It finishes | A short remark, and nothing else. |
| A run ends in an error | The character reacts once, and does not repeat itself. |

## Three levels, and only one of them interrupts

The rule the whole app is built on is that attention has to be earned. Level one is posture only: the character's pose changes and nothing else happens. Level two is a call, and it is the only one that asks for you. Level three is a celebration, and it is rate limited on purpose so that it still means something the fortieth time.

> A companion that nags gets uninstalled. Nothing here blocks the screen, steals focus, or stacks up while you are away.

## What it does not do

- No macOS notification centre banners piling up behind your work.
- No terminal to keep visible, and no second window to arrange.
- No polling of your project folder, so no delay between the agent stopping and you knowing.

## Questions

**Does it work with Claude Code in a terminal, or only in an IDE?**

Both. The hooks are Claude Code's own, so it does not matter where you run it.

**What if I run several agents at once?**

Each run is tracked separately and named by project, so a call tells you which one stopped.

**Does anything about my code leave my Mac?**

No. The hook reports locally over a Unix socket, and there is no server to report to.