Shellby
Press kit

Writing about him?

Everything you need in one place: words to copy, the facts, and art you're welcome to use. Write about him, review him, screenshot him, put him in a talk or a tutorial.

Describe him

In a sentence, or a paragraph.

One sentence

Shellby is a free, open-source pixel hermit crab for the Windows desktop who gets things done with Claude Code, on your own Claude plan.

One paragraph

Shellby is a free, open-source desktop pet for Windows 10 and 11: a pixel hermit crab who lives on the wallpaper, behind your windows, and gets things done with the official Claude Code CLI on your own Claude Pro or Max plan. He adds the tooling people otherwise build around Claude Code themselves (parallel tasks on their own branches, undo for any turn, review, routines that start when your usage limit resets, and alerts on your phone), while your skills, hooks, MCP servers and permission rules carry over. Without an account he's still good company: he talks, plays, dresses up and keeps an eye on your PC's health. Shellby has no telemetry and is licensed under the GPL-3.0.

Please mention that Shellby is an independent project, not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Anthropic. “Claude” and “Claude Code” are trademarks of Anthropic, PBC.

Key facts

The short version.

Name
Shellby
What it is
A desktop pet that runs Claude Code
Platform
Windows 10 & 11 (x64)
Latest version
0.78.0, October 9, 2026
Price
Free
License
GPL-3.0
Maintainer
x-salmon
Source
github.com/x-salmon/shellby
Claude side
Claude Code 2.1+, Pro or Max plan
Built with
Electron, plain HTML, CSS and JS
Wardrobe
173 accessories, 24 effects, 18 crabs
Privacy
No telemetry, no servers
Art & screenshots

Rendered from the real app.

Every picture here comes from Shellby itself: his sprite engine draws the art, and the screenshots are the app with fake account details. PNG unless it says otherwise.

The Shellby banner: three crabs on the sand beside the name
Banner1280 × 420
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Shellby's app icon: the crab in his teal shell
App icon512 × 512
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A lineup of Shellby crab skins
Crab lineup918 × 246
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Five Shellbys: fingers crossed, a focus helmet, a red CI sign, sweating at 83 degrees, and asleep in his shell
His desktop life1148 × 326
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Five Shellbys dressed head to tail in outfit sets
Outfit sets1468 × 326
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A pixel beach at night with fourteen sandcastles
His beach1460 × 620
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A crab card: Shellby in a wizard hat with a coffee mug, his tasks done, trophies, projects shipped and an outfit code
Crab card1200 × 630
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A weekly crab card: projects shipped, tasks done, a streak and new trophies
Weekly card1200 × 630
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Shellby with three helper crabs
Demo videoMP4 · task, helpers, trophy
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Screenshots

Three helper agents in crew lanes; one asks to run a script it wrote
Helper crabs692 × 1053
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The Projects page: five repos, one with a dev server up on :5173
Projects692 × 1053
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The Health view: Shellby sweating in his tank, GPU at 83°C, gauges and drive bars
Health692 × 1053
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Shellby's Outfits screen, with slots for hat, face, neck, claw, shell and effect
Wardrobe692 × 1053
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Automate → Routines, with a describe-it box above three routines
Routines692 × 1053
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Settings → Claude: Always use my Claude plan, and the permission modes with Ask first recommended
Settings692 × 1053
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More screenshots, poses and trick GIFs are in the repository's docs/img folder.

The name and the crab

Use him freely. Just don't become him.

Shellby's code is GPL-3.0. The name Shellby and the hermit crab as a mascot (and the app and tray icons) are unregistered trademarks of x-salmon, reserved so that when someone downloads something called Shellby, they know whose it is.

Yes, go ahead

  • Write about him, review him, screenshot him, put him in a talk or a tutorial.
  • Fork the code, change it, ship it. That's what the licence is for.
  • Say your project is “based on Shellby” or “a fork of Shellby”, and link back.
  • Make skins, packs and add-ons. Those are yours.

Please don't

  • Name your fork “Shellby”, or anything a tired person would misread as Shellby, in its project name, app name, installer, domain or store listing.
  • Use the crab or the icons as your own project's logo or app icon.
  • Suggest your version is the official one, or that it's endorsed by this project.

Want to use the name or the crab for something that isn't listed here? Open an issue. The answer is usually yes. The full text is in TRADEMARK.md.

His colours

Coral#ff7a5c
Sea glass#7fd6c2
Abyss#081214
Paper#fff4e4

His type

Pixelify Sansheadings
Atkinson Hyperlegibletext
Martian Monolabels, code

All three are under the SIL Open Font License 1.1.

Questions, interviews, show-and-tell

GitHub Discussions

The best way to reach the maintainer, x-salmon, and everyone else who works on him. Start a discussion

 Found a security problem?

Report it privately

Please don't open a public issue. Use GitHub's private vulnerability reporting, and you'll get a reply within a week. How to report

Meet him first.

The best way to write about him is to use him for a day. Free for Windows 10 and 11.

Download Shellby See everything he does