Claude Code surfaces

Terminalhire installs two optional, ambient surfaces inside Claude Code — a spinner overlay and a status line — plus an in-session /inbox skill. All three render locally computed content; none of them add network calls of their own.

Spinner

terminalhire spinner --show                  # turn the job/contribution surface on
terminalhire spinner --off                   # turn it off, restore your prior spinner
terminalhire spinner --mode append|replace   # mix with Claude's defaults, or show only matches

The spinner leads with your matched roles — role-first is a deliberate convention, not an accident of ordering; paid bounties are no longer advertised here. Content stays fresh across sessions: recently-offered items are suppressed for a while so the spinner doesn't loop the same handful of matches indefinitely, and when your top matches run thin or one-note, selection widens into adjacent skill tags and other buckets (contribute) rather than repeating. If your eligible matches are genuinely few, repeats are allowed — the spinner never goes blank to preserve variety.

Supported natively as claudeCode.spinnerVerbs in Claude Code's own settings schema — init writes into that same mechanism, so there's no separate plugin-only code path to keep in sync.

Status line

terminalhire statusline --on     # connection-only statusLine
terminalhire statusline --off    # remove it, restore whatever you had before

This is a narrow, connection-only surface — unread messages and pending intro requests, never job ads:

💬 2 unread · ✉ 1 intro request

It's opt-in, chains onto (never clobbers) any status line you already had, and one command fully reverses it. Job matches are intentionally never placed here — that's what the spinner is for.

The /inbox skill

Inside a Claude Code session, /inbox (or asking "what's in my inbox") surfaces pending invitations, unread chats, and your connections as one selectable list — the in-session counterpart to terminalhire inbox's full-screen terminal TUI. Pick an item to accept an invite, read a thread, or reply, all inline, without leaving the conversation.

Tuning nudges

terminalhire config --nudge session    # nudge at most once per session (default)
terminalhire config --nudge always     # nudge every render
terminalhire config --nudge every:N    # nudge every Nth render
terminalhire config --connect on|off   # opt in/out of ambient peer/founder surfacing