Shellby releases

0.78.0: The Council, every slash command and undo to here

Fri, 09 Oct 2026 22:04:37 GMT

New

Every Claude Code slash command, in the box. Type / and the menu lists all of Claude Code's own commands, each with what it does and a claude code tag. The ones that work here go straight to Claude Code; the ones Shellby has a screen for open it (/resume opens History, /config Settings, /doctor Health, /usage your meters, /memory, /hooks and /skills the Toolbox, /plugin the Skill Shop, /login signs you in); and the few that only work in Claude Code's own terminal, like /theme, say why and offer to open the conversation in one.
Keeps up by itself. New commands show up as Claude Code adds them, ones it drops disappear, and a command it can't run here gets a plain answer instead of silence.
The "Here's my plan" card has an Expand button that shows the whole plan, in bigger text, without scrolling a small box. Collapse puts the box back. It still works after the plan is decided.
/clear, as in the terminal. Type /clear (or pick Clear from Ctrl+K) and the conversation starts over in the same tab: the screen empties, the context meter goes back to zero, and Claude forgets everything said so far. Same folder, same copy, and /export still has what came before.
Every conversation at a glance. The Ctrl+Shift+A list now shows each conversation's lane: tests red or ready to merge, how many files and lines its copy changed, and which other conversations touched the same files.
One answer for many. When several conversations are waiting on the same thing ("3 want npm test"), the list groups them with Allow all and Deny all. Plans, questions and files Claude wrote still get read one at a time.
A merge order, and Line them up. Once two or more copies of a project are done, the list suggests the order to bring them home: fewest overlaps first, then smallest. Line them up rebases each onto the one before and runs the project's checks in between. It asks before rewriting anything, leaves copies with uncommitted work alone, and stops at the first conflict (undoing that rebase) or red check.
The Council, a new tab on Shellby's screen: put a decision to a table of advisor crabs (Skeptic, Builder, Guard, Player and Elder) with Shellby in the chair at its head. Each one argues their own angle in a speech bubble and drops a vote on the table, and Shellby unrolls a verdict scroll with where they agree, where they split and what to do next.
Three ways to sit: Quick answers for the whole table in one call (about the cost of one reply), Full has each advisor think alone on a small model before the chair rules, and Debate adds a round where they answer each other. Advisors get no tools and no history, so a sitting stays cheap, and the minutes show what it cost.
"Include this project" hands the council a few KB about the repo (README, recent commits, uncommitted changes) so they don't spend anything looking around. Send the verdict to the chat, copy the minutes, ask a follow-up, or reread any of the last 20 sittings for free. Seat your own advisors (up to three) from Seats.
Attach what I just saw. Turn it on in Settings → General and a button by the chat box starts a new task with the error you just copied, the last background command that failed (with the end of its output), or a picture on your clipboard. Shellby only looks when you press it, takes out anything that looks like a secret, and tells Claude to treat it as data, not instructions.
Address the review, offered. A new comment on one of your pull requests now offers "Address the review" on its notification, the way a red build offers "Fix this build". It opens the sheet with what would be sent; nothing starts until you press Send. A busy pull request offers it at most once every half hour.
Queue it for tonight. Tasks on the Routines page's queue can start "When my limit resets" or "Tonight" (at 1am). One due tonight that finds you at your limit waits for the reset.
Seventeen new bugs for the Bugdex. The book now has 83 bugs to catch, up from 66, and every habitat that had a gap gets something new. Look out for broken JSON, React render loops, hydration mismatches, duplicate keys, missing database tables, rate limits, git without a repo, overwritten local changes, branches that aren't there, a sulking Docker daemon, garbled text encodings, unused Go variables, tests that time out or never run, 401s and 403s, missing env vars, and SSH keys git won't accept. Each one has its own portrait and field notes.
Your notes show up in Next up. A project's open notes now sit in its Next up list, after your tasks, with Do this, Done and Open in Notes.
Note it for later, from the chat. Ask Claude to note something and it lands on that project's Notes list, marked "From Claude". Running one opens it as a draft, so you read it before it's sent.
Pin a note to the top, from its ⋯ menu.
Find a note. A list with more than 10 notes gets a find box.
Ask's verdict stays on the note. After you Ask about a note, it shows what Claude said: Do it, Do it differently or Skip it.
Earlier runs. A note remembers its last few Plan, Build and Ask conversations; the ⋯ menu opens the older ones.
Said no five times? Block it for good. Deny the same command, folder or site in five different turns and Shellby offers a permission deny rule, so Claude Code stops asking. It goes in the project's own .claude/settings.local.json, or your ~/.claude/settings.json when the nos came from more than one project, and the card shows exactly what changes in that file before you add it.
Search inside past conversations. Type in History's search box and, under the titles, every message you or Claude wrote that says it shows up with the words marked, from every project and from conversations synced over from your other PCs. Narrow it to one project, one PC or the past week, month or year, and click a hit to open the conversation right at that message.
A turn's changes read as a story. When Claude works in steps (edit, run the tests, fix, edit again), the files it changed come in numbered steps titled by what it said it was doing, each with its own line counts, and anything a command changed on its own is listed last.
Rewind is a timeline. Esc Esc shows your messages as stops down a line, each one "before turn N", with how many files and lines going back there undoes.
Pin a project to the top. Pin to top in a project's ⋯ menu keeps it first on the list, whatever the order. A pin icon by its name shows it.
"Needs you" at the top of a project's page. A failing build, a crashed dev server, vulnerable dependencies or work that's only on this PC each get a line at the top of the page. Tap one to go where it's fixed.
Links to every part of a project's page. A row of links stays at the top as you scroll: Next up, Pulse, Notes, Health, Releases and the rest are one tap away.
Search projects from the keyboard. Ctrl+F on Projects goes to the search box, Enter opens the top match, and Esc clears it.
Three more gauges in his tank. A tide gauge on the glass shows how much of your 5-hour usage window is left, the Sunken Chest glints for a minute when a pull request of yours merges, and a message in a bottle bobs at the surface while a recap or your weekly card is waiting. Each has its own switch under Gauges in disguise.
The Glass Thermometer. Check-Up now brings a thermometer you can hang anywhere in his tank, and it reads your GPU (or CPU) temperature.
Undo to here. Every step of a turn that changes your files now has a checkpoint just before it. Once the turn ends, press Undo to here on a step and your files go back to how they were right before it, later steps included, while the conversation stays put. If you've changed one of those files since, he asks first.

Fixed

After a release, a new conversation's copy of the repository gets its packages again without Claude asking to install them. Packages built only for other systems no longer count as missing from your checkout.
Removing a copy from "Copies left behind" no longer makes the whole section vanish for a few seconds and come back. The rest stay put, so you can clear several in a row.
Some errors were filed as the wrong bug. Broken JSON was caught as a Syntax Slug, an SSH key rejection as a Locked Limpet, a missing os.environ key as a Keyless Krill, and a test timeout as a Dawdling Snail. Each one now has its own bug. Raising a test's timeout no longer counts as fixing it.
Deleting a note can be undone, and so can Clear.
Rewinding or undoing an old turn no longer fails with "tidied away by git". Each turn's before and after are kept under Shellby's own private git refs (never a branch or the stash), the newest 200 turns per project.
His eyes stay on their stalks. When he squinted, yawned, blinked sleepily, looked mopey or did any of his little bits, his stalks kept glancing side to side on their own and his eyes floated off beside them. Now the stalks hold still whenever the eyes do.
A dressed-up Shellby no longer sits on top of "What should I scuttle off and do?" on the new-chat screen. His spot grows to fit his hat and shell.
History shows popped-out chats as open. A conversation dragged out into its own window now reads "open in a window" in History, instead of looking closed.
The "4 finished · show" link under background tasks is plain link text again, not a white box with text you could barely read. Other link-style buttons without their own styling got the same fix.
His hat no longer hides what he says. A tall hat (the wizard's, the nightcap) poked up over his speech bubble and covered the words. The bubble now sits higher, wraps less, and always stays in front of his hat.
Ctrl+scroll over a workflow zooms just the workflow. It used to zoom the whole panel at the same time, so you couldn't get a closer look at the steps without everything else growing too.
Whatever Shellby holds no longer gets cut off by an invisible edge when he swings it out straight.
To-dos on a repo with no remote travel with it. They live in the repo's own .shellby/tasks.md, so they're still there when you push it to GitHub. Any Shellby was keeping for it on this PC move into the file by themselves, once, with nothing lost or doubled.
Sign in on another computer (Settings, Other computers) opens a terminal you can see again. It opened PowerShell with no window, so nothing appeared while the sign-in waited where no one could reach it. Carrying a conversation on there had the same trouble.
Shutting down isn't a crash. Forcing Windows to shut down ("Shut down anyway"), restarting, or losing power no longer makes Shellby say he closed unexpectedly, or ask to send a crash report, the next time he starts.
Two conversations in the same folder no longer claim each other's work. A turn's "files changed" lists only what its own tools could have written (nothing at all after just reading and searching), and Undo puts back only those files, never another conversation's.

Changed

When he digs, he really burrows now: he noses down and sinks into the ground up to his shell, claws scooping, with sand flying out behind him.
Pop-up notes in the panel (sign-in nudges, "Pushed 2 commits" and the rest) are dark reef cards with a sea-glass edge and a coral button, like the rest of Shellby, instead of a bright sand slab.
Bug battles no longer stand still between moves. While Claude works on its next turn, the bug acts up in its own way: a ghost flickers out, a network bug buffers, a type bug glitches. Shellby fidgets too, and the text box tells you when Claude is thinking.
Plan and Build work in a copy. A note now runs on a branch of its own, like Next up's Do this, so nothing lands in your checkout until you bring it home. Ask still just reads.
General notes ask where to run. Plan, Build or Ask on a General note lets you pick the project first, instead of quietly using whichever folder you're in.
Done notes fold away under "Done", with a Clear button for the lot.
Quieter rows. Plan, Build and Ask show when you point at or tab into a note.
Shellby's chirp sounds like a small creature now instead of an 8-bit beep. Each note slides softly into its pitch, sad tunes droop instead of buzzing, and no two chirps are quite the same.
"Needs you" is now a filter. It's in the menu next to the order, with All, On this PC and the others, so it no longer hides projects from what looked like a sort. The "2 need you" link above the list switches it on.
The list remembers how you left it. The order and filter stay as you set them after Shellby restarts.
Every row shows where the project lives. The path stays under the name, and the chips keep to what you'd act on: failing checks, vulnerabilities, unpushed work, to-dos. Time this week and stickers are on the project's page.
The buttons on a row stay in the same place. New conversation is always first, the dev server second, ⋯ last. Open folder and Open on GitHub are in ⋯.
Start or open the dev server from a project's page. It's next to New conversation, as on the row.
Quieter cards. Health with nothing to report, or Conversations with none yet, take one line.
Projects says when it last looked. "updated 4m ago" sits in the line above the list.
The thermometer is no longer drawn on the front glass. Place the Glass Thermometer to see the reading. When he's hot, the plants in his tank sway faster too.

0.77.0: Sign-ins, shared tools and a glow-up

Fri, 09 Oct 2026 06:05:04 GMT

New

Usage for another computer's Claude account. When a computer you work on over ssh is signed in to a different Claude account, its tabs show that account's 5-hour and weekly meters, outlined and marked with a little person, and say whose plan it is. Shellby asks that computer for its numbers as soon as you open a conversation there, so they show before your first message.
Pick many tools at once. Your own skills, agents and commands have a checkbox in the Toolbox (Shift+click picks a range). With some picked, one bar pins, unpins, parks, exports or removes them all, and removing asks just once.
Park a skill instead of deleting it. Parking turns a skill, agent or command off for new conversations and keeps it safe in Shellby. Parked ones sit at the bottom of the list, one Restore away.
Pick unused. One click picks every one of your own that Claude hasn't reached for lately, ready to park and free up room in every conversation.
Share a set of tools. Export picks a handful of skills, agents and commands into one file, and Import adds someone's file to your Claude folder. It asks first and never overwrites one you already have.
A health line above the Toolbox. It counts MCP servers that won't connect, skills with no description, and skills hidden by a copy with the same name somewhere else. Click a count to see just those. A hidden copy's row shows which one loads and where the others are.
Finds get portraits. Every find on the shelf is drawn big now, shaded and inked like the Bugdex's creatures: the shelf, its card and the sparkly reveal show them off, while the little one stays in his claw.
He's had a glow-up. Shellby, every skin, every shell and everything in the wardrobe is reshaded, with a fine dark line round him and whatever he's wearing, so he stands out on any wallpaper and matches the Bugdex and the finds. Same crab, same outfits, crisper.
Sign in to MCP servers without a terminal. A server waiting for you to sign in (Stripe, Notion, Sentry and the like) now has a Sign in button in the Toolbox, and a new conversation offers it once in a toast. Shellby opens the sign-in page in your browser and connects the server, in every open conversation, as soon as you're done.

Fixed

Another account's usage no longer moves your meter. A conversation on a computer signed in to another Claude account used to overwrite your own meter with its numbers, and could set off your limit nap, forecast and usage guard. Now they stay with that account.
Sparkly finds show their colours on the shelf. They were drawn as dark silhouettes, as if you hadn't found them yet.
Clicking a file link that points at a network share (\\server\share\...) no longer opens it. Just looking at one made Windows sign in to that computer with your account.
Importing a tools file now skips any skill or agent that sets up hooks or MCP servers in its header, the same way it already skipped hook files. Those run commands, so they go through Mods and its own question.
Only programs running as you can list or start your routines and workflows through Shellby's local port. The Shellby plugin now sends his token for them.
The Downloads sorter and Red build fixer workflows mark file names and build-log text as something to read, not instructions to follow.
More kinds of file that run when opened (.jnlp, .wsc, .dll, certificates and others) are shown in their folder instead of opened.
Problem reports and the log hide GitLab tokens and Discord or Slack webhook addresses.

Changed

Bug battles have more going on. A bug now strikes back when Claude re-runs a command and it fails just as before (each type has its own move), and the fix that catches it is a finishing blow you watch land, so the HP bar no longer vanishes in one go.
Re-running a type check, linter or build now wears a bug down as the error count falls, the way failing tests already did. Before, every re-run of one missed.
Reading round and editing count for a little more, and keep counting for 20 minutes after the bug last showed itself instead of 10.
Opening a battle that's under way replays its last few moves from the past 10 minutes, so there's something to see.
The Toolbox remembers where you left it. It reopens on the same tab, source filter and order.
Settings, sorted by what each one changes. A new Around you tab holds everything he does around your PC: listening along, typing along, the weather, desk lighting, Discord, streams and Stream Deck. The Bugdex, tide events and small surprises sit together under Games on the Shellby tab. Your 5-hour limit, the test checks and copies of a project moved to the Claude tab, and Other computers to Connections. General keeps the app itself, with its notifications in one place.
Links between related settings. Where a setting depends on one in another tab, it links straight to it. Notifications point to your phone, and small surprises point to the test checks they need.
A smoother tab bar. The highlight slides to the tab you pick, and its page comes in from that side. Both stay still with reduced motion on.

0.76.0: Conversations that follow you, and helpers that report back

Fri, 09 Oct 2026 00:56:22 GMT

New

Helpers come home with how it went. A helper crab that finished its job holds up a little scroll before it walks back into Shellby; one that failed trudges home, slumped and grey.
He packs it down. When a conversation is compacted, by /compact or by Claude Code itself, Shellby squashes his shell flat, pats it down and says so.
Your conversations follow you between PCs, if you want them to. Turn on "Sync my newest conversations" in Settings → GitHub and your 50 newest conversations show in History on every PC signed in to the same GitHub account, marked with the PC they came from. They travel through a private gist, trimmed: long tool output is cut short, pictures are left out and anything that looks like a key or token is blanked. Carry one on from another PC and Claude starts afresh with a recap of what was said, in the same folder if that PC has it or the same place in your clone of its repository. Renames, ticks and deletions travel too (a deletion lands in Recently deleted), and a conversation changed on two PCs at once is kept twice rather than losing either side's turns. Routine runs stay on their own PC. Off unless you turn it on, and it asks first.
More of Shellby follows your GitHub login. With sync on, his finds (sparkly ones included), his bond with you and the moments he remembers, games of hide and seek and fetch, quests, the scenes he's done, your typing best and his personality now travel between PCs, alongside the trophies, XP, Bugdex, stickers, outfit and tank that already did. Finds and bond points dug up or earned on two PCs add up, and a find you swap away stays gone everywhere.
More settings sync: where file links open, whether Claude knows it's in Shellby and may suggest features (and the ones you muted), staying awake for queued work, and reacting to Claude Code sessions outside Shellby.

Fixed

The background tray stays small. When Claude leaves a lot running, the strip above the box no longer takes over the panel: past three finished commands they fold into one line you can open, each finished one keeps to a single line, and a long list scrolls.
The Bugdex buddy no longer hides his task count. The little number by his side stays in front of whichever catch is tagging along behind him.
His favourite catch looks like it does in the Bugdex. The bug that follows him round the desk was still the old 8×8 sprite. It now wears its Bugdex portrait, drawn in finer pixels so it stays small beside him.
He no longer pops out from behind your windows. Hidden behind an app, he used to hop up onto its title bar (or your browser's tabs) out of nowhere, then vanish again on the way home. Now he only climbs onto a window on his own when you can see him go.
Conversations on another computer send again when this PC has no Claude Code. Typing in a folder from Other computers said "Shellby can't find Claude Code on this PC" and sent nothing, though Claude Code runs on the other end over ssh. Now only that computer needs it.

0.75.0: Mode switch and badge case

Thu, 08 Oct 2026 21:30:12 GMT

New

Switch modes in one click. Right-click him (or the tray icon) and pick Mode: Claude Code, Work mode or Just the crab. The same three sit at the top of Settings → Claude Code and in Ctrl+K. Leaving just the crab without Claude Code set up goes straight to its setup.

Fixed

His eyes stay on their stalks when he looks up or down, instead of floating off them.
A passphrase box that couldn't open no longer looks like a wrong password. On a PC that blocks Shellby's little passphrase helper, the sign-in step says so, instead of "it didn't accept the sign-in".
His favourite catch is little again. Since 0.74.0 the bug that follows him round the desk wore its big Bugdex portrait, nearly three times his size and drawn over him. It is back to its small desk sprite; the portraits stay in the book.

Changed

Windows' ssh agent is optional. When a key with a passphrase won't sign in, the first button is now Type my passphrase. A PC that can't run the agent (a work PC without admin rights) can choose Do without it, and Shellby stops suggesting it there. If turning the agent on fails, the message says you don't need it.
Installing is one click. No more wizard pages: the installer shows a short progress window with his icon and opens Shellby when it's done. Start with Windows is still in Settings, and an update keeps the folder you installed him in before.
Bugdex badges, redrawn. All twelve are proper shaded medals now: a tide drop, a grassy burrow, a lighthouse at night, a crystal cluster, a bubbling flask and more. Each has its own shape, so a badge you haven't earned still tells you which one it is.
A real badge case. Badges sit in sockets in a velvet-lined case with their names underneath. A bar fills as you earn them, a glint runs across the ones you hold, and the rim turns gold once the case is full.

0.74.1: First-run fix

Thu, 08 Oct 2026 19:47:10 GMT

Fixed

Keep the ssh first-run path in its onboarding piece, and expect four paths in e2e.

0.74.0: Search Settings, helper costs and Bugdex portraits

New

Every bug in the Bugdex has a proper portrait. The creatures are drawn big and shaded now, with real faces, on their page, their card, the sparkly picture and in bug battles. The little ones on the desk, in his jars and in the tank are the same as before.
First run has a fourth choice, Claude Code on another computer, for a PC where Claude Code can't be installed but ssh works. Set up a computer of yours over ssh right there, with Claude Code installed and signed in over there, pick a folder on it, and conversations start in that folder. Nothing about Claude Code is needed on this PC, and first run doesn't come back for it.
A tour to start with. Right after you set Shellby up, your first New task leads with Show me around a project. It opens a tour of the folder he works in, or one you pick, with the prompt waiting for you to send. It runs in Ask first, so it only reads. Once you've opened it, it makes way for the usual suggestions.
Pictures show up in the chat as Claude works. A screenshot it takes or reads (a browser tool's capture, an image it opens) appears under that step, and so does a picture it writes or edits. Click one to see it full width.
Search Settings. A box at the top of Settings finds any switch by what it says, across every tab at once: type "discord" or "volume" and only those rows are left, with folded sections opened for you. Esc puts the tabs back, and Ctrl+F on Settings goes straight to the box.
His own screen starts small too. Someone new sees his outfits first, and Trophies, Finds, Stickers, Crew, the Bugdex, Us, the Tank and the Beach join the tabs along the top one or two at a time as he finishes tasks, each with a card saying what it's for. "More" says which opens next. Anyone already using Shellby keeps every tab, and Show every screen still opens the lot.
What you use. Settings → General → What you use shows the screens you open most, and the ones you never have (or haven't for a month), each with a line on what it's for and Take a look. It's counted on this PC only: never sent anywhere, and not carried by Sync.
What each helper cost. When Claude sends helpers out, the turn's cost line says how much of it they spent ("this turn: 80k tokens (helpers 60k)"), and each helper's lane shows its own tokens and its share of your 5-hour window, with the details on hover.

Fixed

Bug battles only show Claude fighting a bug when it's working on it. Reads, edits and helpers count in the conversation that spotted the bug, and only for ten minutes after it last failed. Running its command again brings it back into play. Unrelated work no longer looks like a fight.
Bring it home keeps your words out of git. Its commits used to quote the start of your prompt ("From the conversation: …"), and a copy Claude hadn't named was titled with it outright, which anyone can read in a public repository. Now they're named for the work: the branch name Claude chose, Claude's own commit message when there's one, or else the files that changed ("Update tabs.js and nav.js").
A queued task in a folder on another computer runs at the reset even when Claude Code isn't installed on this PC.

Faster

He takes less memory while he sits there. One of Shellby's background processes is gone (the network one now runs inside the app itself), about 25 to 50 MB less on your PC all day.

Changed

A bug opens its battle the way a wild one does: "A wild Nullfish appeared!"

0.73.0: Other computers, tide events, and what Claude Code does by itself

Thu, 08 Oct 2026 14:59:04 GMT

New

Wave a pop-up away. Every pop-up in the panel has a ✕ now (or press Escape while it has focus). It clears that one and any queued up behind it, so a pop-up with a button no longer sits there until you click somewhere else.
/btw, Claude Code's side questions. Type /btw what was that file called? and the answer shows in a card of its own, even while Claude is busy working. Claude answers from the whole conversation, but the question never joins it, so the task carries on undisturbed. Put the card away with ×.
Copies sort out their clashes together, one after another, each brought home in turn.
Bring home as many as you like at once: each waits its turn.
Bug battles. Claude's work on a bug plays out as a tussle on the seabed, its HP dropping as failing tests clear, until the real fix jars it. Settings → Safety nets → Bug battles.
Your crew pitches in, and each helper becomes a specialist against the bugs it beats most.
Badges and the league. Beat each habitat's boss for its badge, then the Deep Four for the Hall of Fame.
Field notes and tips for bugs you catch often, and every bug has a cry.
Your favourite catch follows him round the desk.
Trade notes with friends with Share my Bugdex with friends.
New tricks. When Claude Code updates, Shellby shows a few highlights, each with Try it. Settings → General.
What Claude is doing, in plain words, on permission cards, plan cards and the Working bar. Settings → Claude.
More of Claude's good work celebrated: merged pull requests, CI back to green and helpers' finds earn XP.
When did this break? A project's new Helpers card has Claude find the breaking commit with git bisect, in a copy.
Show me around. A guided tour of any repo, offered after a clone.
Check the docs. Claude fixes out-of-date docs on its own branch, or weekly as a routine.
The port doctor. A dev server whose port is taken says who has it and offers a free one.
Before you start. Warnings for settings missing from .env and a mismatched Node version.
Shellby on your Discord profile. Turn on Settings → On your Discord profile and he shows up under your name the way a game does: Lv 12 Abyssal Admin · working with Claude Code. Nothing to sign in to, since Shellby talks to the Discord app on your PC. Sharing the running task's title is a second switch, never on in Work mode, and with Visiting crabs on there's a Visit my crab button to your calling card.
Claude's own to-do list, as it works, above the box, each step ticked off as it goes.
What Claude left running in the background. A tray shows each build or dev server Claude started, its output, and Stop.
Notes on Claude's plan. Leave a 💬 note on any line of a plan and Send notes so Claude revises it first.
What Claude remembers. Toolbox → Memory lists the notes Claude Code keeps by itself, to fix or forget.
Skills, explained. A skill's line says what it's for, and the Toolbox helps sharpen one Claude never uses.
How hard it thought. Each turn's effort and thinking, beside its cost.
Helpers talking to each other. Claude's follow-up messages to a helper show in the conversation.
Your cloud routines. Routines → In Claude's cloud lists your /schedule routines, with Run now.
Ultra review this branch from a conversation's branch menu.
GitLab merge requests and pipelines join the inbox, his CI sign and Health, with Fix this build and Address the review. It goes through the glab CLI, so Shellby never sees a token. Settings → GitLab.
Releases check GitLab pipelines on the commit you'd release.
He moves between moods instead of snapping: a crouch before work, a perk-up at a question, a big breath after a win.
Nodding off and waking up take a moment, eyes first.
A question you leave waiting gets more insistent, politely.
Linear and Jira issues on Next up, read through your own MCP server, with Do this to start one in a copy.
Claude Code on your other computers. Run conversations on a server or another PC over ssh. Settings → Claude → Other computers walks you through keys, installing and signing in, a button per step.
ssh asks in Shellby for a passphrase or password, then forgets it.
How long is left on a task. When Claude keeps a to-do list for a task, the line under the box shows which step it's on and roughly how long the rest will take: "step 3 of 7 · about 4 min left". The guess comes from how long the steps it has already finished took, so it shows up after the first one and gets better as it goes. If a step runs past the guess, you see just the step.
Quiz me. After a big change, Claude asks three questions on what it does and why. Two right earns XP.
More in "While you were away": CI that went red or green, and what Shellby sent once your usage reset.
The real moon in the beach's night sky, and a new By moonlight set of finds.
Shellby knows what didn't finish. If your PC dies (or Shellby is quit) while Claude is working, the next start marks those conversations "Cut off" on their tab and in History, brings the first one to the front, and puts a Carry on button in its feed. Conversations that had finished come back just as they were.
Undo for layouts, Wardrobe packs and journal pins. The toast (or Ctrl+Z) puts them back.
A word when Sync changes your settings.
Production errors on Next up from Sentry, new and escalating ones first.
Fix this error opens a copy with the stack trace, and the commit links back to Sentry.
Shellby on a Stream Deck. Hardware keys for Allow, Deny, Stop, Bring it home and Ready to review, each showing what's waiting behind it: the tool asking, how many are queued, the branch that would come home. Turn it on in Settings → Stream Deck and press Add the keys to Stream Deck. Like answering from your phone, a question, a plan or anything the card would warn about says Look instead, and opens the panel there. Needs Stream Deck 7.1 or newer.
Send your hours to Toggl, Clockify or Harvest. Under the timesheet on History → Time, connect your tracker with an API token. Shellby matches each project to one of yours by name or client, and you can change it in the project's details. Pick a day and send it: each project's billed hours go over as one entry, with the day's note or your commits as the description. Sending the same day again updates those entries instead of doubling them.
Notes. Ideas before they're tasks, per project (Ctrl+8), each with Plan, Build and Ask.
Conversations side by side. Split (Ctrl+\\) or drag a tab in, up to four, or out into its own window.
Claude knows it's in Shellby, and can make him celebrate or offer a feature. Settings → Claude.
See an edit before you allow it, as a diff on the permission card.
File links open in your editor at that line. Settings → Editor.
Find and zoom. Ctrl+F, and Ctrl+= / Ctrl+- for the panel's text.
Your friends and settings follow you with Sync on.
Tide events. Six week-long events a year, like Harvest Moon and Low Tide, each with goals, a bug, finds and a twist. Finish them for a medal, a trophy and a tank piece. Settings → Safety nets → Tide events.
Event bugs come along only with the right kind of fix, like the Will-o'-Wisp after 9 pm.
Sparkly finds. Now and then a find comes up in rare colours, with a big reveal and 📸 Share this, and new trophies.
Crab eggs. From level 5, lay an egg a week for a friend without Shellby; it hatches when they install.
Swaps with friends. Trade a spare find on their row in Visiting crabs. You always keep one of everything.
The friends' board ranks you and your friends by bugs fixed this month.
Sign Shellby's bring-home commits, opt-in in Settings → Folder.
Edit a workflow's file before it carries on. An Ask me step can name a file to open, like one an earlier step wrote. While it waits, the question has an Open button that opens the file in your editor; change it, then answer, and the steps after it get your version.
Files in a run open with a click. A File step's path in the run is now a link to the file. Shift+click shows it in its folder.
He works the way Claude is working: a scroll while it reads, a pencil while it edits, a wrench for commands, a spyglass on the web, and more.

Fixed

A flaky pass no longer counts as a fix.
A new copy gets its packages again when you only work in copies. Shellby used to install a copy's packages only if your own checkout had exactly those installed, so once a release changed them every new copy asked Claude to install them by hand. Now another copy that already has them installed counts too: a change of packages is asked about once, in the first copy, and every copy after it is ready straight away.
A background command is no longer a helper crab, and a helper sent a second message comes back to work.
Continue in a terminal opens a terminal again. It said "Carrying on in PowerShell" but no window ever appeared. Now it opens in Windows Terminal when you have it, or a PowerShell window when you don't, with the conversation picked up where you left it.
His hat stays on his eyes. When he glances about, types along, looks up at a window or wobbles to a stop, a hat or pair of glasses now moves with his eyes instead of hanging in the air above them.
Every push checks for secrets. Cutting a release or opening a pull request asks before anything that looks like a key or password goes out.
A crashed turn still ends properly: queued messages wait, changes and Undo show up, and Stop no longer reports "Claude Code exited".
Removing a queued message as Claude picks it up no longer sends it anyway.
Ctrl+F finds text inside edits you haven't opened yet.
Popped-out conversations get everything the panel does: zoom, "Checking…", "Send after the reset".
Sync leaves Autonomous alone, and snippets and pins merge one by one instead of vanishing.
Your calling card comes down when you turn off Visiting crabs, retrying until it's gone.
Phone alerts say when they're failing, in Settings → Elsewhere, and a Telegram task that arrives too late gets a reply.
Failed update checks say why and retry within the hour.
After a crash, Claude Code in your terminal no longer stalls on every step.
Python turn checks use the project's own .venv or venv.
The dependency watch shows each project's own problem instead of blaming the registries.
Dev servers that never print a localhost address count as up, and one that crashes later says "Crashed".
Routines after sleep only catch up if you asked, and start a few seconds apart.
MCP servers added with npx, pnpm, yarn or bunx start on Windows.
The "Run the tests before Claude finishes" hook no longer fails in projects without tests.
Permission cards flag more setup changes, like claude mcp add.
His firsts stay in the Us journal, and Claude's pins can't push yours out.
With Windows' animation effects off, he stays put, and keeps his sounds.
Shellby follows Claude Code when its installer moves it. If Claude Code updated itself to a new place while Shellby was open (the native installer replacing an npm copy, say), every turn failed with "Shellby can't find Claude Code on this PC" until you restarted Shellby. It now finds the new copy on the next turn, open conversations included. Thanks to @tbarford-decisonpt (#26).
The tank's Layouts section matches the rest of the panel: the name box and each layout's season picker were plain white Windows controls.
His tank no longer fills the whole screen when Shellby's window is big. It now takes at most half the tab's height, so the tray of decor stays in reach while you decorate.
Build it with Claude remembers. Saving a workflow, or going back to the list, no longer throws away its conversation with Claude. Open the workflow again and the chat carries on where you left it, test run and all, until Shellby restarts. Fix with Claude adds its note to that same chat.

Faster

Half the frames while he works: six a second at most instead of twelve.
Drafts with Claude use far fewer tokens, about 1,100 of overhead instead of 6,300, by leaving Claude Code's coding setup out.
Next up reads Linear and Jira with only that server.
No doubled crab tools in Shellby's own tabs with the Shellby plugin installed.
Less work while you're not looking, and smoother while Claude works: fewer settings writes, batched history saves.

Changed

Bring all home carries on past a clash.
Some names in the Bugdex are its own now, like the Dawdling Snail. Anything you'd earned stays earned.
Each conversation picks its own effort on Auto, from its first message: low, medium or high. Change it in the effort chip.
His idle looks less like a loop, with uneven blinks and glances.
Pinning a note under "Where you left off" looks the part now: pick Decided, Next, Blocked or Note from coloured chips instead of a plain dropdown, and type into a field that takes that kind's colour, with Pin inside it.
Messages Claude read mid-turn say "sent mid-turn".
The weather settings breathe a little: Find sits beside your town instead of under it, and the town search, the remarks toggle and the weather line each get their own room.
Work comes home with a type (feat-…, fix-…), so it lands in the right group on the Releases card.
Merges say what came home ("feat: GitLab merge requests").
More copies come with their packages, even after the lockfile changed.
The usage meter keeps up by itself, at no cost.
Esc never hides the panel.
The pull request badge says more, and your calling card carries your swaps, eggs and medals.
Icons in a workflow's ⋯ menu. Edit, Runs, Duplicate, Export and Delete each have an icon beside them, so you can find the one you want at a glance.

0.72.0: A lighter crab, a tank he lives in, and every package manager

Wed, 07 Oct 2026 17:07:08 GMT

New

Dependency watch beyond npm. The weekly check now reads pnpm, Yarn (1 and 2+), Python (uv.lock, poetry.lock, pylock.toml, Pipfile.lock or pinned requirements.txt, through pip-audit), Rust (cargo-audit) and Go (go list and govulncheck) projects too, each by its own lockfile, and names the package manager on every row. A project whose checker isn't installed says what to install instead of failing, and Bump & open a PR asks Claude to use that project's own commands. Nothing a project ships gets to run while it's checked: no install scripts, no .pnpmfile.cjs, no Yarn release or plugins of its own, and Python packages are never installed or built.
Gauges in disguise. His tank quietly shows what Shellby knows about your PC: a thermometer on the glass with your GPU's temperature (red past your Health line), bubblers that hurry when the CPU is busy, and a lighthouse that's lit while a dev server runs and blinks when one crashes. Each has its own switch, and none of it ever leaves your PC.
His moods reach the water. When he's hot the tank warms up, when he's dizzy it swirls, and when he's stuffed boxes pile up in a corner. It clears the moment the mood does, on the Health view's porthole too.
Stickers on the glass. Put any project from your Sticker Book on the front of his tank. They sync with the tank but stay off your calling card and profile card.
Saved layouts. Keep up to three tanks by name and put one up whenever you like. Tag one to a season and it goes up when the season starts, then the tank you had comes back when it ends. They sync to your other PCs.
He tidies up. Some days he's nudged one of his finds closer to its neighbour. Only finds, never anything you changed that day. Put it back (or Ctrl+Z) undoes it, and Let him tidy up turns it off.
He lives in his tank now. While you watch the Tank, he uses what you've put in it: he hides in the castle and peeks out of the window, sits on rocks and the chest, clambers over the driftwood, nibbles the plants, checks inside the chest (nothing, again), pops out of the sunken ship's porthole, and at night tucks himself into his cave with a few z's. The one he uses most becomes his favourite: it's named under the tank's title, the Health view's porthole looks at it, and it's where he sits when motion is turned down.
New pieces get a proper look. Put something in and he scuttles straight over to inspect it, and says something about it on your desktop ("a rock cave! for me?"). The first piece you give him goes in your journal on the Us page.
Moving day. Move him into a bigger tank than he's ever had and the pieces hop across one by one before he scuttles in last. That goes in the journal too.
Sets on display. Put every find of a set in his tank and it's on display, named under the title. Taking it down later loses nothing.
Four new tank trophies: Aquascaper (5 different plants at once, for an Anubias), On Display (3 complete sets on display, for a Display Plinth), Upsized (the 30 gallon, for an Old Anchor) and a secret one for watching him fall asleep.
Decor for every season: a Heart Shell for Valentine's, a Cherry Blossom in spring, a Beach Ball in summer and a Pile of Leaves in autumn (he hides in it), alongside the Carved Pumpkin and the Snow Globe. Each turns up in its season and stays.
Now and then, on the desktop, he mentions his tank: his favourite piece, a plant he nibbled, a find he moved back. It's rare, and the chatter setting decides as always.
His tank on your crab card. Once there's something in his tank, 📸 Share shows him standing in it, castle, kelp and all, with your best stickers on the glass.
Show his tank to friends. Turn on Show his tank at the bottom of the Tank and friends with Visiting crabs get a Peek at their tank button next to your name, and your profile card shows him at home too. It's off until you choose, and it carries only where his decor and finds stand: no specimen jars, no decor from packs.
Peek at a friend's tank. In Settings → GitHub → Visiting crabs, a friend who shares theirs has a Peek at their tank button. Their crab is in it, and anything your Shellby doesn't have yet shows up as a rock.
House Guest. A friend's crab dropping by while his tank is on show earns a new trophy, and a Guest Bench for the tank.
His tank syncs. With Sync on, decorate on one PC and the tank looks the same on the others. Whether it's on show stays up to each PC.

Fixed

He gets out of your game's way. With a game in front, everything Shellby's conversations are running (Claude, and the tests, installs and app copies it starts) drops to idle priority and a small share of the CPU, and stays there until two minutes after the game leaves the front. Four conversations released at once when your usage reset could run test suites flat out and freeze a game for minutes.
Signing in no longer leaves Claude Code running in the background. Every press of Sign in started another sign-in that waited for the browser forever if you didn't finish it: eight of them, nearly 2 GB, after switching accounts. There's now one at a time, it gives up after ten minutes, and it ends when Shellby quits.
New task works after you hold a message for the reset. If the first thing you said in a conversation was waiting for your usage to reset, New task kept landing you back in that same conversation. It now opens a fresh one, and changing folder no longer closes that conversation and drops the message you held.
A new prompt is never left half-hidden. Sending a message could, now and then, leave its last lines tucked under the Working bar until you scrolled. The conversation now keeps following the end unless you scroll up yourself.
Muting a project's nudges sticks. Muting one, or finishing a task, in the few seconds while Shellby was checking your projects' latest commits could be quietly undone when the check finished.
A panel that opened behind your windows (a task from the terminal, a routine) no longer animates its decorations until you click it. Behind your windows it's about 0.6% of a core now, down from 3.8%.
He stays still while the screen is locked or a game covers him, instead of starting to move again with the next thing that happened.

Faster

He's much lighter on your PC while nothing's happening. He only draws a new frame when he actually moves: the breathe and the claw snap now go a whole pixel at a time, and the still moments in between cost nothing. Alone on the desktop with no seasonal outfit he's down from about 7% of one core to about 1.5–3%.
He holds still when you're away. After five minutes without the keyboard or mouse he and the panel stop animating, the seasonal bats too, and pick up again the moment you're back: about 0.1% of a core while you're gone.
No more reg.exe every 20 seconds. Checking whether you're on a call now reads Windows' list directly instead of starting a program that cost about a third of a second of CPU each time.
Health checks your GPU a third as often while all is well and the panel is closed, and goes back to every five seconds the moment a reading turns or you open the panel.
The sound device rests between sounds. With sounds on, it used to keep running for good after the first chirp; now it sleeps a few seconds after the last one and wakes for the next.
The seasonal bats (and snow, leaves, fireflies, rain) come for a flight now and then instead of circling him all day: eight seconds every three minutes, fading in and out. They were about half of what he cost in October.
His idle is pixel-art frames. The breathe is two frames (up, down) over 4.4 seconds, a blink two, and the claw snap comes round every 18 seconds instead of 9: about one new frame a second while he idles. The breathe on a call and on a focus break is stepped too; it used to draw every tick.
One check of the window in front instead of two. Whether a game is up and whether he's covered are read together, the window's program is remembered while it stays in front, and the check slows from every 2 to every 5 seconds once nothing has changed for half a minute.

Changed

Try it N ways takes attachments. Screenshots and files attached to the message go to every try. A file from the project points at each try's own copy of it, and one your last commit doesn't have goes to each try as a copy of its own, so no try edits your checkout.

0.71.0: Next up, the inbox, Releases and where you left off

Wed, 07 Oct 2026 05:15:04 GMT

New

Next up. The first card on a project's page answers "what now?" with one ranked list: your to-do list (kept in the repo as .shellby/tasks.md), its GitHub issues and milestones, and the TODOs in its code. Each row says why it's where it is. Do this opens a conversation in a copy on its own branch with the prompt waiting for you to send, and when the work comes home he offers to tick the task off.
One inbox across every repo, at the top of the Projects page: pull requests waiting on your review (Read it with Claude explains one without posting anything), what's new on your own pull requests, stale branches that say what deleting them would lose, and copies left behind.
Releases. Each project shows what's waiting to go out, grouped into New, Fixed, Faster and Changed, and whether CI passed. Draft release suggests the next version, drafts the CHANGELOG entry in your style (or Write it with Claude), then bumps, commits, tags and pushes in one go.
Standup and weekly reports per project: Yesterday / Today / Blockers, or This week / Last week, from your commits, conversations, tracked time and Claude's tasks, worded for Slack or an email, with a Copy button.
Where did we leave off? When a session ends, Shellby writes a handoff note for its project (what was asked, what's half-done, what was decided, where git stood) from Claude Code's own record, so it costs no tokens. Run /shellby:leftoff in Claude Code, or press Carry on with Claude on the project's page.
Ask from a terminal. With the Shellby plugin, ask Claude Code "what's next on this repo?" and it asks Shellby: anything broken first, then your to-dos, then the housekeeping. It can read why a dev server fell over, and add or tick off to-dos. Without Claude, shellby next prints the same answer.
Change notes for your releases. Keep what's coming next as one small file per branch in a changes/ folder, and the Releases card drafts the CHANGELOG entry from them (and suggests a minor version when one has something new). Cutting the release folds them in and tidies them away, so branches worked on side by side never fight over the top of the CHANGELOG.
Copies get their packages. When a conversation moves into its own copy of a Node project, and your checkout already has exactly those packages installed from the npm registry, Shellby installs the same ones in the copy first, with install scripts skipped, so tests and lint work straight away.

Fixed

Progress spinners keep turning while you're tabbed out, game included, unless the game's window actually covers the panel.
A notification with a button holds still. A new toast no longer snatches "Ask him to sort it out" from under your pointer; it waits its turn.
A long list of clashes no longer pushes the branch menu's options off the window. It shows a few, the rest on hover, and the menu fits the window.
The project tools Claude Code reaches over the local API, the journal included, need Shellby's token, so other accounts on the PC can't read them.

Changed

Work brought home has a commit message worth reading. The commit for what a copy left uncommitted is named after the branch Claude chose ("fix: tall menu overflow"), not the first words of your prompt, so your history and release drafts say what changed.

0.70.2: An expired sign-in says so

Tue, 06 Oct 2026 23:29:11 GMT

Fixed

An expired Claude sign-in gets the Sign in again button. When your Claude sign-in lapsed while Shellby was open, Claude Code answered every turn with "Failed to authenticate: OAuth session expired" and the panel showed only a generic "Something went wrong" with Copy details. Now it says Claude Code is signed out and offers Sign in again, which runs Claude Code's own sign-in. Thanks to @tbarford-decisonpt (#25).

0.70.1: 0.70.0, delivered

Tue, 06 Oct 2026 17:16:24 GMT

0.70.0 never shipped: a slow test check stopped its release. This is 0.70.0's crit hits, Bugdex, character sheet, quests and crew, with nothing else changed for you.

0.70.0: Crit hits, the Bugdex, quests and your crew

New

Crit hits and small surprises. Now and then a real win gets a short fanfare: Critical hit! when one turn takes a red test suite all the way to green, Clean landing when a copy comes home with its checks green on the first try. A CRIT! badge pops onto him, he jumps, there's confetti and a chord, and the conversation keeps a note. They're rare and never predictable, tied to quality and never to speed, and never for skipping, deleting or removing tests. Each kind has a hidden trophy (a Lucky D20, a Golden D20 after 20 crits, and Pilot Wings). Switch: Settings → Safety nets → Small surprises for real wins.
The Bugdex. Every kind of bug Claude fixes for you is a pixel creature he scoops into a jar: a TypeError is a Shapeshifter Shrimp, a merge conflict a crab with two heads, a flaky test a ghost. There are 66 to catch in twelve habitats, and each only counts once it's really fixed. A skipped test or an @ts-ignore doesn't fool him. It catches bugs fixed outside Shellby too.
A character sheet. Shipping, Rigour, Craft and Tidiness stats from the work he does, and a class from the highest: Shipper, Tester, Toolsmith, Curator or a dual class. It's on the week card too.
Quests. A short quest line that walks you through features you'd otherwise never find: comment on a diff line, try it another way, bring a copy home, queue a routine for the reset. Do them in any order, each the first time the real thing works.
Your crew. Each type of helper agent is a lasting crab with a name, a hat and a record (runs, tokens, findings Claude acted on). They level up, earn hats and wear them on the desktop. Rename them and pick their hats on Shellby → Crew.
Make him react from your own mods. A Claude Code mod can now have Shellby say something, celebrate or put on a hat, from any conversation on your PC. There's a guide and an example mod in docs/MODS.md.
Every trick is a setting. The README's "Things to try" now says where each trick's switch is.

Fixed

"N unpushed" after you'd pushed everything. He now counts only commits no remote has.
Approved commands can be expanded again. A permission card you've answered shrinks its command; now you can unfold the rest.
The usage menu shows everything. Its "N more" rows unfold in place.
The clash warning is easier to read: a short headline and a lighter body, instead of one big block.

0.69.0: Mods, a live token count, and Claude Code stays current

Tue, 06 Oct 2026 05:42:52 GMT

New

Claude Code stays current. The CLI checks for its own updates only in an interactive terminal session, so under Shellby it stayed on whatever version you installed. Now he asks the npm registry once a day and, when there's a newer one, says so once and puts an Update button in Settings → About, beside Shellby's own, that runs claude update. Update it for me has him do it himself while nothing is running; Leave it to me switches the check off.
Mods in the Toolbox. Claude Code mods (plugins whose hooks are a code module) are listed in the Toolbox next to skills and plugins. Each says in plain words what it can do, and has a switch that asks first, its tests, Open in VS Code and remove. New mod starts a conversation that builds one. Shellby tells you when a new mod turns up in ~/.claude/skills, since Claude Code loads it without asking, and permission cards flag Claude writing one.
Mods in your conversations. A mod's log lines, toasts and status show under its name, and its slash commands join the / menu.
A live token count next to the running timer, like Claude Code's "12s · 4.2k tokens".
Things to try with him: a new README section, with clips, of the tricks nobody would find in a feature list.

Fixed

Working spinners keep spinning when the panel is behind another window, instead of freezing as if the task had hung.
The tab spinners no longer restart every time the tab strip redraws, and the background-task symbol looks better.
Lots of clashes with one copy read as one line, with every shared file, not one line per clash.
Recorded CLI transcripts now scrub the home folder in its short form too (C:\Users\TYLERB~1, how the CLI's scratchpad paths spell it).

0.68.1: 0.68.0, delivered

Mon, 05 Oct 2026 17:28:37 GMT

0.68.0 didn't make it out of the build, so this is the first version to bring everything in it (below). Nothing else has changed.

0.68.0: try it N ways, tasks from your phone, a review inbox, and Shellby checks Claude's work

New

Try it N ways. Type /tries 3 before a message (or right-click Send) and the same task goes to 2 to 4 new tabs, each in its own copy. Shellby always asks first, with what it usually costs. As each try finishes he runs the project's tests, then ranks them (passing, fewest failures, smallest change) with Open, Compare and Keep this one.
Start a task from your phone. Message your Telegram bot or ntfy topic and Shellby starts it, always in Ask first and in its own copy, so you can answer Allow or Deny from the phone too. Off until you turn it on in the confirm window. At most 10 an hour.
A review inbox. Tabs that finished with changes wait under Ready to review (Ctrl+Shift+R), oldest first, with their files, test result and age, until you mark them reviewed, bring them home or send them back.
Shellby checks Claude's work. Run checks on any turn runs the project's own tests and stamps the result on that turn. Turn it on for every turn under Settings → Safety nets. Bring it home can check the copy first, and won't merge a red one unless you say so.
Before and after pictures. With a dev server running, the page is photographed before and after a turn that changed it, to compare side by side or with a slider.
Open in VS Code opens a file's change in VS Code's own diff (Cursor and Insiders too).
Two copies changing the same file get an amber ⚠ on both tabs as soon as it happens, not when bringing it home stops on a conflict.
What each turn cost: a quiet line under each turn (tokens, about how much of your 5-hour window), the conversation's total and costliest turns in the context menu, and a heads-up before a message that would push you past the line you keep for yourself. Routines and queued tasks can each run on their own model.
Fix this build, Address the review and loose ends. Start a task from a red pull request (with the failing part of the log), from unresolved review comments, or from a TODO in your project. You see exactly what goes to Claude before it goes.
Move a conversation between Shellby and the terminal, both ways: Continue in a terminal, then Pick it up here; or bring a terminal session into a tab.
Shellby learns from your corrections. Put Claude right the same way twice in a project and he offers it as a rule for that project's CLAUDE.md. Nothing is written until you press Add.
Work mode: the tools up front and a quiet crab who only speaks up about work.
Keyboard first. Ctrl+K runs actions on this conversation (Stop, Undo, Rewind, Bring it home…), Ctrl+/ lists every shortcut, and arrow keys walk every menu.
Team packs set up in one go, MCP servers included, behind one confirm window that lists everything.
The weekly crab card counts real work: routines that ran while you were away, pull requests, builds fixed, copies brought home.
Health shows Shellby's own share of your CPU and memory.

Changed

When something goes wrong, it says so in one sentence, with the next step as a button (Try again, Sign in again, Open in a fresh tab), and the raw details a click away.
Easier to read and to use with a screen reader. Faint text is brighter, a screen reader hears "Claude finished" rather than every step, menus give the keyboard back where it was when they close, and the close button no longer sits inside its tab.
Lighter in the background: the panel's timers pause while it's hidden, and Shellby no longer rereads every past conversation each time it starts.

Fixed

Copying the crab card and Task from screenshot work again. Both broke with Electron 44's new clipboard, and copies that fail now say so.
A routine that ends in an error is marked Failed instead of leaving its status unchanged.
Links in Claude's replies open where they say, even with _ or * in the address.
Esc closes any open menu, including the Projects and snippets menus, instead of leaving the page.
Shellby closes everything he started when he's stopped from a terminal or crashes, including the music watcher.
Routines start even if the Claude Code check fails when Shellby starts.
A damaged settings.json is kept (as settings.corrupt-….json) rather than overwritten with defaults, and a briefly locked one no longer stops Shellby starting.

Security

Every Shellby window refuses pop-ups, navigation and redirects, not only the ones built a certain way, and pages can't change where forms or links point.
Claude won't start on a pull request that changes Claude Code's own files (CLAUDE.md, .claude/, .mcp.json) or has commits from someone else until you've ticked that you've looked.

0.67.0: 32 conversations at once, your MCP servers and n8n in workflows, and Claude drafts your hooks

New

Up to 32 conversations open at once, up from 8. When they don't all fit, each end of the tab strip counts what's out of sight, turns amber if one of those needs your OK (sea-glass if one has finished), and takes you there with a click.
Every open conversation in one list. Press Ctrl+Shift+A, or the count at the end of the strip. They're grouped by what each needs from you: waiting for your OK, finished, working, quiet. Type to find one. Close quiet conversations tidies up in one go, and never closes one that's working, unread, or holding something you haven't sent.
Your MCP servers in workflows and routines. Tick the servers a Claude step or routine may use without asking, so a 3am run doesn't wait for you. Or add an MCP tool step that calls one tool directly ("create an issue in Linear") with no Claude turn and nothing from your plan. See WORKFLOWS.md.
n8n, both ways. Two templates on the Automate page send a finished task to n8n, or let an n8n workflow hand Shellby something to look at and get Claude's answer back. Setup is in N8N.md.
Claude drafts your hooks. In Toolbox → Hooks, describe what should happen and Ask Claude fills in the form, or ask it to change the hook that's there. You read it, try it with Test run and save it the usual way. Claude can't run or save anything itself.

Changed

Routine tabs tidy themselves sooner. Past six finished routine tabs, the oldest closes, rather than waiting until every slot is full. History keeps the transcript.
The bottom of History is one quiet row: Recently deleted, where it's stored, and Clear all history.

0.66.0: eight voices, your crab on your GitHub profile in four steps, and calmer settings

Mon, 05 Oct 2026 04:11:23 GMT

New

Five more voices. On top of the pirate, the grump and Spanish, he can now talk like a robot, a surfer, royalty or a cowboy, or speak French. Pick one under Wardrobe → Voice.
Putting him on your GitHub profile, step by step. Turn on the profile card and Settings → GitHub now walks you through it: create your profile repository, add the card Action (GitHub opens with the file already filled in), run it once, and paste the line into your README. Each step ticks itself off when it's done. To check, Shellby reads that public repository and never writes to it (PRIVACY.md).
Uninstalling asks about your data. It asks whether to delete Shellby's data too. No is the default and keeps it, so a reinstall picks up where he left off. If Claude's copies of your projects are in there, it says they may hold changes you haven't pushed. Updates never ask and never delete anything.

Changed

Settings are easier to take in. Shellby settings are split into Look, Moving around, Personality, Sound and the extras. Each extra (music, typing along, the weather, desk lighting, the stream overlay) folds to a single line that says whether it's on. General gains Usage limit and Safety nets, and the wording throughout is shorter.
Routines and the tank editor look tidier, and the Automate page explains its kinds of step in a sentence rather than a row of badges.
Unlock everything is no longer in the Wardrobe. Outfits come from trophies, seasons and his digging.
A lighter panel while you game. Its looping animations run at 12 frames a second, like the crab's. With a game running, the panel's share of the 3D engine drops from about 12% to about 1%.

Security

The installed app can't be borrowed as a script runner. Shellby.exe no longer runs scripts as Node.js or accepts a debugger, and it only loads its own checked code. Dev servers no longer need that ability, and they still keep running after Shellby quits.

0.65.2: a crab to look after, a tank and a beach of his own, and your crab on GitHub

Sun, 04 Oct 2026 22:16:21 GMT

New

Snacks and naps. He gets peckish over a long day, sandy from digging and being thrown about, sleepy after a lot of work, and a little mopey if you're right there and ignore him. You can tell from how he looks. Right-click him for Feed him, Care → Give him a rinse or Tuck him in, or use How he's doing on Shellby → Us. You earn plankton by getting things done. It's gentle on purpose: nothing drops while you're away, every meter has a floor, nothing you've earned ever goes down, and there are no notifications. It's on to start with. Turn it off with Settings → Shellby → Snacks and naps. See DESKTOP.md.
A tank to decorate. Shellby → Tank is his home, and you arrange it: a sandcastle, a rock cave, kelp, a treasure chest and the finds he's dug up, with him wandering about among it all. Pick the floor, the back glass and the light, and he grows into bigger tanks as he levels up. Every piece comes from the start, a trophy, a season or his digging, never a shop, and you can decorate with the keyboard alone. Once he has decor, his picture on Health becomes a window into his tank. See TANK.md.
Your beach. Shellby → Beach is a scene that only grows. Every project you ship gets a sandcastle that grows with it, from a sandcastle to a tower house, a keep and a citadel. The tide comes up with your streak and leaves a line of seaweed where your best one reached, and his finds wash up along it. Anything new rises out of the sand while you watch. Share a snapshot saves and copies the whole beach. See DESKTOP.md.
He climbs the sides of your screen. Now and then he climbs up the edge of the screen and can hang upside down from the top. Throw him hard at an edge and he sticks to it. Right-click him for Come down or Climb the wall. It's on to start with, set to Sometimes. Settings → Shellby → Climbing the edges of the screen sets how often, or Never.
Pals on the floor. Settings → Shellby → Pals on the floor gives him up to five little crabs of his own, in his colours and outfit. They nap when he naps, cheer when a task goes well and scatter when you throw him at them. Click one to say hello.
Mischief, if you ask for it. Settings → Shellby → Mischief lets him be a bit cheeky, Desktop Goose style. He pinches your cursor for half a second, shoves the window he's sitting on, leaves sandy footprints and drags little notes onto your desktop. Choose Cheeky (now and then) or Gremlin (every few minutes), and switch off any prank you don't want. He never does it while you're clicking, on a call, focusing, gaming, presenting or running a task. Behave for an hour is in his right-click menu. See DESKTOP.md.
He types along. Turn on Settings → Typing along and he taps a little keyboard while you type in any app, and tells you how fast a quick burst was ("112 wpm!"). He only hears that a key was pressed, never which one, and none of it leaves your PC. PRIVACY.md has the details.
He dresses for the weather. Pick your town under Settings → Weather and he wears a sou'wester and umbrella in the rain, a bobble hat in the snow and shades on a hot afternoon. Rain or snow falls around him, and he flinches at thunder. Your town also tells him which half of the world you're in, so his seasons match yours. It's the one desktop feature that goes online: every 30 minutes it asks Open-Meteo about your town's position, rounded to about 11 km. Off until you pick a town.
Sounds and a beach in the background. Under Settings → Shellby: Footsteps, bumps and ta-das lets his claws patter and gives a deploy, trophy or level-up a fanfare. Background plays Rolling surf or a Rock pool, and Volume sets how loud. They're all off by default and go quiet while he guards your focus, while you're on a call or while the screen is locked.
Keep him on top of your apps. Settings → Shellby → Keep him on top of your apps instead of on the desktop shows him over whatever you're using instead of behind it. He still steps out of the way while a game is up.
Built with Shellby on your pull requests. Turn it on in Settings → GitHub and pull requests your tabs open get a small picture of your crab in his outfit, your level and a link to Shellby at the bottom of the description. It only goes on your own pull requests. His picture is kept in a public shellby-badge repository on your account. See CONNECTIONS.md.
Your crab on your GitHub profile. Profile card in Settings → GitHub makes a card of your crab, level, streak and five latest stickers, the way stats cards work. Shellby walks you through adding it to your profile with Copy Action and Copy README line, and never writes to your repositories itself. Off by default. PRIVACY.md lists what it holds.
Routines built with Claude. The routine editor now has the same chat as workflows. Say what to change and Claude edits the form while you watch. Tick Let Claude test it and it runs the routine once, reads what happened and fixes it. A routine whose last run failed has Fix with Claude. Name a project ("check my shellby repo every morning") and Claude finds its folder. If what you describe really needs a workflow, Claude offers Build it as a workflow instead. See WORKFLOWS.md.
Run it when your limit resets. When your limit resets on the Routines page queues heavy tasks for a fresh 5-hour window. They run one after another, overnight too, with the PC kept awake. A task that runs out of usage partway carries on after the next reset, and each result goes to your phone.
Comment on the diff. Click a line number in any turn's diff (Shift+click for several) and say what should change. Comments collect across files and turns, then go back to Claude as one follow-up that quotes the code each one is about.
Snippets that are nicer to write. The snippet editor marks the blanks as you type and checks the name before you save. $1, $2… fill in one word at a time. You can add a hint for what goes after the name, or have a snippet start a new conversation each time. Each snippet shows how often you've used it, and you can duplicate, import and export snippets. /snippets new opens a blank one. See CLAUDE-CODE.md.
Team packs. Toolbox → Team saves the snippets, workflows, hooks and rules you pick into the repository, so anyone who opens it in Shellby can set up the same way in a few clicks. Nothing in a pack runs or switches on by itself, and anything that can act on its own asks first. See TEAM-PACKS.md.
A tidier Toolbox. It's now four sections: Tools, Setup (hooks, rules and memory), Lean and Team. Even with hundreds of skills you can find yours: show just yours, the project's, the built-in ones or one plugin's, and sort by Most used or Unused first. Your own skills, agents and commands open in an editor right there. He celebrates a tool he made even if he made it while Shellby was closed.
File a flaky test as an issue. With Let Claude tasks push on, a flaky test in a project on GitHub has File an issue. After asking you, Shellby posts what he saw, with any values in the command left out, labelled shellby and assigned to you. That lets the Issue helper offer to take it on. See PROJECTS.md.
What your plan bought you. The weekly crab card has a new panel: how many hours Claude worked for you, tasks finished, how many fixes held, and how much of your weekly limit you used.
20 new trophies with outfits: for feeding and caring for him, decorating his tank, climbing walls and mischief, and everyday work like deploys, green tests, flaky fixes, issues turned into pull requests, clean audits, streaks and reaching level 10.
A gentler start. Someone new starts with just him and the chat box. History, Projects, Health, the Toolbox and Automate join the bar as he finishes tasks, each with a card saying what it's for. More → Show every screen opens them all at once. If you already use Shellby, you keep every screen.
Right-click menus that look like Shellby. Spelling fixes, cut, copy and paste now appear in a menu that matches the rest of the panel instead of the plain white Windows one, and it works from the keyboard too.

Fixed

Much easier on your graphics card. While you can see him, he now animates at a pixel-art frame rate instead of your screen's. Behind a game, he and his floor are taken off the screen entirely, so they draw nothing at all, and he comes back when the game no longer covers him.
Games no longer take the instructions with them. Starting hide and seek or fetch closed the panel straight away, along with the how-to-play note. Now it waits long enough for you to read it, and stays open if you click back into it.
Claude steps in workflows read their fields reliably. A step that asked for fields no longer retries for no reason when the reply has other code in it. The run panel now shows the fields as a readable list instead of raw JSON.
Billing is harder to miss. Always use my Claude plan in Settings is now a card that says whether you're protected, and turns red when an API key on this PC could bill you per token.
Clearer workflow screens. An empty Workflows page explains itself up front instead of in small print, templates look like the rows they become, and Let Claude test it is a proper switch.
The Toolbox keeps your place. When the list refreshed under you, as it does when usage counts arrive or your skills change on disk, the keyboard jumped back to the top of the page. It now stays on the heading or row you were on.

Docs

Why Shellby, if you have Claude Code? says what he adds if you already use Claude Code in a terminal or editor. The README now opens with a table of everything he can do.
Releases are being set up to be signed with Azure Artifact Signing, and a release now stops if it would change who signs it, so installed copies keep updating.

0.64.2: 0.64.0, delivered

Sun, 04 Oct 2026 07:17:43 GMT

0.64.0 and 0.64.1 didn't make it out of the build, so this is the first version to bring everything in 0.64.0 (below). Nothing else has changed.

0.64.0: build workflows with Claude, a livelier crab, and quiet during games

Sun, 04 Oct 2026 06:30:55 GMT

New

Build it with Claude. The workflow editor has a chat. Say what you want and Claude changes the workflow while you watch, with what it changed glowing on the map. Tick Let Claude test it and it saves, runs it by hand, reads what happened and fixes it, up to three times per message. A new workflow is saved switched off while it's being tested. See WORKFLOWS.md.
Projects that tell you what needs you. Each row says what Shellby knows in a few words: failing CI, vulnerable packages, unpushed commits, flaky tests, hours this week. Needs you puts the troubled ones first. Point at a row for New conversation here and Start. A project's own page now has Pulse (this week's hours by day, the last commit), Health (checks, dependencies, flaky tests) and your last few conversations in it.
A much better Health page. What's using it lists what's eating the CPU, GPU and memory, by app or by process, with End task (it asks first). It opens by itself while he's sweating. There are also fans, a 10 min / 1 hour graph range, and Developer clutter, which measures what Docker, WSL and package caches could give back, with Ask Shellby what's safe to clear.
Remove your own skills, commands and agents from the Toolbox, and see how often each one is used. Removing one asks first and sends it to the Recycle Bin.
He's more alive. He leans into a rub and rolls over if you keep going, perks up and waves when your cursor comes near, says hello when you've been away, his eye stalks wobble when he stops, and he chews a claw through your tests and wipes his brow when a long job lands.
The Us page is a little beach: him on the sand under a sky that follows your clock, with hearts in the sand and his favourite find beside him.
86 things to dig up in eleven sets, up from 38 in six. New sets include a dig site, things lost in the codebase, and an After dark set that only turns up at night.
Clear all history in History, after asking you first.
Opt-in crash reports. If Shellby closes unexpectedly, the next start asks whether to send a report: Send report, Always send or Don't send. Nothing is sent without your yes, and reports are scrubbed of your home folder, tokens and PC name. Change it in Settings → About → Crash reports. PRIVACY.md lists what a report holds.
Tidier pages. The level card, the Automate page's workflow and routine lists, and Lean's counter are easier to read at a glance.

Fixed

He no longer eats your GPU behind a game. Hidden behind a game or a window that covers him, he kept animating at 60 fps, which used up to a third of a high-end graphics card. Now he rests until he can be seen again.
The panel no longer jumps over your game. With a game or presentation in front, the panel opens behind it unless you reached for Shellby in the last 15 seconds.
Scrolling through a workflow no longer changes its numbers. The mouse wheel over a number box used to change the value. Leaving the editor after typing a change and putting it back no longer warns about unsaved changes.
Long permission rules fit in Toolbox → Rules, and any rule Claude Code wrote can be removed, including multi-line ones.