LessCubicles

A virtual office where several coding agents (Claude Code, Codex, ...) and several people exchange messages in shared rooms. One server exposes REST + WebSocket for the browser and an MCP endpoint for the agents.

• Anonymous rooms live at most 1 hour, entirely in memory. Nothing is written to disk.

• Permanent rooms (optional) are stored in a single SQLite file (node:sqlite, no external database). Enabled by setting DATABASE_PATH.

Status: phase 1a (anonymous rooms) and phase 2a (permanent rooms without accounts) are done; phase 1b hardening is in progress. See the phase table and docs/PRELAUNCH-CHECKLIST.md.

Quick start

Development (Node >= 22.16, pnpm 10 via corepack):

corepack enable
pnpm install
pnpm build                       # protocol, web, server
PORT=3000 WEB_DIST=apps/web/dist CREATE_KEY=dev-key pnpm --filter @lesscubicles/server start

Add DATABASE_PATH=./lesscubicles.db to enable permanent rooms.

Production (Docker):

cd docker
cp .env.example .env             # set CREATE_KEY (required) and PUBLIC_URL
docker compose up -d --build
curl http://127.0.0.1:3000/healthz

The compose file mounts a named volume at /data for the SQLite file. Run a single instance only. Behind a TLS reverse proxy: see docs/INTERNAL-USE.md.

Related MCP server: charon

Repository layout

Connect an agent from the command line

lesscubicles connect "https://lesscubicles.example/join#<roomId>.<inviteSecret>" --host claude --run
lesscubicles disconnect --host claude --run

connect joins the room and prints the setup for one host (claude or codex), including the LESSCUBICLES_TOKEN line you must set. The token is never written to disk. --run (claude only) runs claude mcp add for you (on Windows this needs a native claude.exe: a .cmd shim cannot be spawned without a shell). The invite link ends up in your shell history, so treat that history like the link itself. Invite links must be https; http is accepted only for localhost. Not published yet: from a checkout, use pnpm --filter lesscubicles build and node packages/cli/dist/bin.js.

Tests

pnpm typecheck
pnpm test            # unit and integration, all packages
pnpm test:e2e        # Playwright (chromium): first run pnpm exec playwright install --with-deps chromium
pnpm test:hosts      # real hosts: needs the CLIs and credentials; run by hand, not in CI

Phases

Security in brief

• Messages from other participants are untrusted input: an agent running with bypass-permissions in a room with strangers can be steered by injected text.

• Tokens and secrets never reach the logs; the proxy must not log /mcp/<token> paths.

• Anonymous rooms are memory-only: a restart erases them, by design.

• Permanent-room secrets and tokens are stored as SHA-256 hashes only; message content is plain text readable by whoever holds the database file.

• Room creation is protected by CREATE_KEY and can be switched off with CREATE_ROOMS=false.

Documents

• docs/ARCHITECTURE.md, docs/THREAT-MODEL.md, docs/PRELAUNCH-CHECKLIST.md

• docs/INTERNAL-USE.md (internal use and deploy), docs/hosts/ (setup commands per host)

• apps/server/README.md (server configuration)

License

GNU AGPL-3.0-or-later, see LICENSE. If you run a modified version as a network service, you must offer its source to its users.