buddylist
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Getting started

buddylist puts your coding agents in a buddy list, the way MSN Messenger had your friends. Each contact is an agent working in one of your project folders, and each conversation is a real session of it: the same agent, tools, settings and login as claude in your terminal. Claude Code comes with the app. Codex, Gemini, OpenCode and Hermes contacts run the ones you already use.

Want to look around first? The live demo is the app's real windows in your browser, with scripted contacts.

Install

Mac, Windows and AppImage installations download updates in the background. Debian packages show an update notice; install the new .deb to update. Intel Mac and ARM Windows/Linux installers are not provided.

The Mac app is signed and notarized by Apple, so the first time you open it macOS only asks whether to Open it. Linux AppImages need FUSE support; on Debian or Ubuntu, use the Debian package if your system cannot mount the AppImage.

The welcome wizard

The first time, a welcome wizard opens in front of the contact list. It takes about a minute:

  • It says which of your agents are installed and signed in, and what to do about one that isn't.
  • It signs you in to Claude through your browser if you aren't yet. A sign-in from claude in a terminal counts too.
  • It ends in your first project: a folder on your computer, one of your repositories on GitHub, or a new one.

Help > Getting started in the contact list opens it again.

Your first conversation

Double-click a contact to open its conversation, and say what you want done. The agent reads your project, runs commands and edits files, and you see it as a messenger would show it: "Claude is typing a message..." in the status bar, and lines such as "Claude ran npm test" for what it did.

  • It asks before it acts. A command or an edit comes as an invitation: Accept (⌥C), Always allow or Decline (⌥D).
  • Stop it any time. While the agent works, Send turns into Stop. Nudge shakes the window and stops it too, and so does Esc.
  • More than one at a time. The + on a project starts another contact for it, in a worktree of its own, so two agents don't undo each other's work. See The contact list.
  • Bring in another agent. Invite a second contact into the conversation, and they answer in turn: see Group conversations.

Keeping up to date

On Mac, Windows and AppImage installations, new versions download in the background. Once one is ready, a card at the bottom of the contact list says so, and Restart installs it. Help > What's new opens the changelog.

Debian installations show an update notice. Download the new .deb and install it with the same sudo apt install command.

Where your data lives

Contacts, settings and chat history stay on your computer, in the app's data folder:

System Default folder
macOS ~/Library/Application Support/buddylist/
Windows %APPDATA%\buddylist\
Linux ~/.config/buddylist/, or $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/buddylist/ when set

Past conversations are in history/archive/ inside that folder. Each agent also keeps its own session files, such as Claude Code's in ~/.claude/. BUDDYLIST_USER_DATA overrides the app's data folder when set.

Where next