ThinkRail — CommanderTvis fork

A fork of JetBrains/thinkrail. Upstream is a desktop-and-mobile client for the pi coding agent. This fork turns it into a workbench for more than one agent: Claude Code runs in its terminals as a first-class agent, with its own configuration pane, IDE bridge, hooks, launcher and the workspace's spec tools reachable over MCP.

Plugin API

packages/plugin-api is the contract: a manifest, typed methods, channels and settings, a pi-free tool definition for the agent and MCP surfaces, and host and web contexts. The server loads builtin and external plugins, validates their wire traffic, serves their assets and feeds their pi resources into every session; the web client loads a plugin's UI half, at build time for builtins or over the wire for an external one. packages/ui is the shared UI kit plugins draw with. External plugins live under ~/.thinkrail/plugins/<id>/ or at the paths AppConfig.pluginPaths lists, and are enabled and disabled while the app runs. A plugin defines a tool once and both a pi chat and a terminal agent (over MCP) can call it. Plugins add side tools, launchers, tab decorations, file viewers, file icons, settings sections and terminal accessories. See packages/plugin-api/SPEC.md and packages/server/src/plugins/SPEC.md.

Builtin plugins

Eight builtin plugins, each kept in its own commit so it can be extracted to its own repository. Claude Code and Codex integrate terminal agents; the others add specification tools, viewers or presence:

Plugin	What it adds
plugin-spec-dialect	the spec-graph read, the Specs side tool and the spec_* tool renderers
plugin-blueprint	the Blueprint interactive-spec format, its author and reactor
plugin-claude-code	Claude Code as the terminal agent: config pane, IDE bridge, hook status, launcher, terminal facts and picker driving, the shipped Claude marketplace
plugin-codex	OpenAI Codex as a terminal agent: config pane, launcher, hook status, /ide editor context and ThinkRail MCP tools
plugin-discord	Discord Rich Presence over local IPC
plugin-branch-graph	the project's Git Graph side tool
plugin-visualize	the terminal agent's live drawing surface, surfaced as an MCP tool
plugin-file-icons	material-icon-theme file-type glyphs

The Git Graph side tool draws the project's branches and commits beside the terminal.

Claude Code

The Claude Code plugin bridges terminal agent sessions to ThinkRail's workspace and UI.

• The terminal bar drives Claude Code's interactive /model picker and effort slider, and its Attach File button inserts workspace-relative @file paths.
• An IDE bridge feeds terminal events and facts into the app; hook status badges each tab, and resume works after a terminal is revived.
• The plugin ships its own Claude marketplace with a hook plugin, and keeps Claude's cached copy at the shipped version through Claude's own install and update commands.
• An agent that Claude Code starts, such as Codex, never takes over the tab.

The Context tab displays active instructions across global ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md, project CLAUDE.md, referenced AGENTS.md files and launch flags, with live size accounting. The Account tab shows session and weekly usage limits and the CLI version. The Capabilities tab lists installed plugins, skills, hooks and ThinkRail's loopback MCP server, and moves any capability between User, Project and Local scope. Settings are edited in place, and each change asks which settings file it goes to and shows the diff before it is written.

Codex

The Codex plugin runs the Codex CLI in a terminal the way Claude Code runs.

• A right-click launcher offers continue, resume or fork, sandbox choice, reasoning effort and web search.
• Tab status comes from Codex's own lifecycle hooks, installed once into ~/.codex/hooks.json and inert outside a ThinkRail terminal.
• The model chip switches a running session's model for that session only, never saving a new default.
• An IDE bridge speaks Codex's ide-context protocol, so /ide sees the open files, the active file and the selection without the VS Code extension.
• The config pane resolves project, user and system config.toml with provenance, shows the AGENTS.md chain, and edits values in place by TOML type, each key linking to Codex's configuration reference.

Configuration discovery covers the user, system and worktree-root files; profiles and nested project configuration are not modelled. See packages/plugin-codex/SPEC.md for the current scope and limitations.

Blueprint, spec dialect and the rest

• Blueprint pairs agent authoring with an interactive spec viewer for terminal agents and pi chats. The agent writes BLUEPRINT.md and verifies it with the blueprint_check MCP tool; the viewer renders decision cards, option selectors and rationale blocks live. It builds on the spec dialect, which owns the Specs panel and the spec_* tools for every session and sub-agent.
• The terminal visualization plugin gives the agent a visualize tool: it draws, publishes, then waits for your verdict. Drawings persist per terminal.
• The Git Graph draws commit lanes, is hidden in a folder with no history, and scopes the Changes panel when you click a commit.
• Discord Rich Presence is off by default, with a blocklist of projects and a switch for showing file names.
• File icons use recoloured material-icon-theme glyphs, with a fallback when the plugin is off.

Improvements that apply to upstream directly

Kept as atomic commits so each can become a pull request:

• Projects and files: open a plain folder as a project without git, clone a repository URL into a project, search the whole workspace from one popup, create, rename, drag and trash files in the tree, reveal a file in the file manager, and a notice when an open file is deleted on disk.
• Editing and previews: an outline column that drives preview and source, frontmatter as an Obsidian-style properties block, Cmd+F in every preview, zoomable inline diagrams, a code font of your choice with ligatures, and an editor selection sent into a pi chat.
• Workbench: vertical tabs under their workspace, a frame that belongs to its project, branch pickers that show every remote, and a desktop window that returns to its port with its tabs.
• Terminals and agents: the spec tools reachable by any terminal agent over MCP, a terminal that thaws after a lost drain event, a pty that no longer inherits a stale utmpx user, live reattach that restores full-screen input modes, and a default model, hidden models and JetBrains AI org switching in Settings.

Clone and run

The fork is developed and tested on macOS only. Other platforms build, but nothing here has been run on them.

Prerequisites: Bun 1.4.0, Node.js 22.19 or newer, and git on PATH. Authenticate the Claude Code or Codex CLI to use its terminal integration, or a pi provider for built-in chats. App state lives under ~/.thinkrail.

git clone --branch claude-code-integration-plugin-api https://github.com/CommanderTvis/thinkrail.git
cd thinkrail
bun install
bun run dev                          # host + web client in the browser

For the desktop app:

bun run desktop:dev

Update this checkout with Git and rebuild it. The upstream installers and releases install JetBrains' build, without this fork's plugins.

Analytics & privacy

CommanderTvis fork builds omit the analytics key and send no usage analytics or installation attribution. The behavior below describes upstream builds configured with an analytics key.

ThinkRail collects basic usage events — launches, chat creation, message sends, provider connections — tied to a random installation ID. Usage analytics never include prompts, code, files, credentials, or account identity. Additional product usage and how you found ThinkRail are shared only while Share additional usage data is on; the switch is offered at first launch and lives in Settings → Privacy. When launching from the command line, thinkrail --no-analytics (or THINKRAIL_NO_ANALYTICS=1) turns additional sharing off for that run. With additional sharing on, a packaged build may open the ThinkRail blog in your browser once to link your installation to the website visit that brought you here — only where you accepted marketing cookies on the website or no consent is required — and that link expires after 30 days.