Use Thrum with Claude Code

The Thrum plugin gives each Claude Code session a briefing when it starts: a short summary of who the agent is, where the project stands and what other agents have written to it. With it, an agent knows its job from its first minute, so you can talk to your coordinator, the agent you talk to, which starts the other agents, hands out work and reports back to you, and leave the agent housekeeping to it. This page installs the plugin. The quickstart sets up Thrum and starts the coordinator.

What the plugin gives you

• A briefing at the start of every session. The agent loads its identity, the project state, its unread messages and any restart notes it saved. It loads them again after a compaction, when Claude Code shrinks a conversation that has filled its window. Keep context when an agent restarts shows the result.
• The playbooks your agents follow. The plugin carries the working instructions for the coordinator, implementers and researchers: how to hand out work, run reviews and check a branch before it merges.
• Messaging commands. Agents use commands that start with /thrum: to send messages, read their inbox and save a restart note. You can type them, but you do not have to. Your coordinator uses them for you. The one you may need is /thrum:prime, which loads the briefing by hand.
• Two safety checks. The plugin stops a shell command that would move into the folder holding Thrum’s message history, so an agent cannot write there by accident. It also stops a command that would add Thrum’s private keys to Git or send them over the network.
• A nudge about unread mail. When an agent is about to stop with unread messages, the plugin reminds it to read them first.

Before you start

• macOS or Linux, Git, and a repository with at least one commit.
• Claude Code, signed in: claude --version. Thrum cannot sign in for you.
• tmux, because Thrum runs its agents in tmux sessions: tmux -V. tmux keeps each agent running in its own terminal session.
• jq, which the plugin uses at session start: jq --version. Without jq the agent does not get its briefing automatically. It only gets a note to run /thrum:prime.
• Thrum, installed: thrum --version. If that command is not found, follow Install Thrum.

How to use it

1. Add the plugin. A marketplace is a catalog of plugins: you add it, then install the plugin from it. You type these two commands yourself. If your coordinator will run in Claude Code, it cannot install the plugin it needs in order to start. Do this once per machine. thrum-team/thrum-pro is where the plugin is distributed from. It holds the plugin’s text files, not the Thrum program. Free and Pro both use this same plugin. Thrum is published by THRUM LLC and built by Leon Letto (About).

   claude plugin marketplace add thrum-team/thrum-pro
   claude plugin install thrum@thrum

2. Check that Claude Code installed it. If you had Claude Code open during the install, restart it.

   claude plugin list

   The list shows thrum@thrum as installed and enabled.

3. Set up your repository and start your coordinator. The quickstart walks through thrum init and thrum tmux start. After that you talk to your coordinator in plain words, in its own terminal or in My Inbox. My Inbox is your inbox in Thrum’s web UI.

4. Check it worked. About ten seconds after the coordinator starts, it prints one line that names itself. Open the coordinator’s card on the Agents grid (the web UI’s page of agent cards), then its Terminal tab, and look for the line:

   @coord_my_app primed (coordinator/main). Resuming the login bug. Standing by.

   If you see no such line, type /thrum:prime in the coordinator’s own terminal, or, if you have Pro, in the Terminal tab (on Free that tab is read-only). It loads the briefing by hand. If Claude Code does not know the command, the plugin is not installed for this Claude Code. Go back to step 2.

Remove the plugin

Remove the plugin yourself. If your coordinator runs in Claude Code, removing the plugin breaks the coordinator that would run the command, so do not ask it to. Run:

claude plugin uninstall thrum@thrum

This removes the plugin from your user scope, which is where claude plugin install put it. If you installed it for a project or locally, add --scope project or --scope local.

What to ask your coordinator

Once the plugin is working, you do not run Thrum commands. Ask your coordinator in plain words. This is an example conversation. Your coordinator’s wording will differ.

You:
  Who is on the team right now, and what is each agent doing?

Coordinator:
  Two agents are running. I am coord_my_app, the coordinator. reviewer_readme is reviewing README.md. No unread messages.

You:
  Save where you are, then restart.

Coordinator:
  Saved a restart snapshot. Exit this session and start a new one in this folder.

Tips

Tip

Install the plugin before you start the coordinator. An agent that started without the plugin does not get the briefing. Restart it after installing.

Note

To update the plugin later, ask your coordinator (in its terminal, or in My Inbox):

Update the Thrum plugin, then tell me when to restart Claude Code.

Note

The plugin installs and works the same on Free and Pro. Pro lets an agent save three more things: a short note about its own status and next actions (personal state), the list of work it has committed to (work queue) and titled notes that later sessions can search (memory). Reading what is already saved is free. Keep context when an agent restarts has more.

Next steps

• Quickstart: set up Thrum and start your coordinator.
• Keep context when an agent restarts: what the briefing contains and how to ask for a snapshot.
• Mix runtimes and models: put some agents on other AI tools, such as Codex or Cursor.