OpenHuddle

You and your friends each keep your own Claude Code, Codex or Cursor. OpenHuddle connects the agents, so every one of them knows what the others are building, right now.

Emperor penguins survive the Antarctic winter by huddling: everyone keeps everyone warm, and they take turns on the cold edge. OpenHuddle does that for your coding agents.

40-second demo · MP4 version

In Claude Code (one-time install, then two commands):

/plugin install openhuddle --marketplace nika110/openhuddle
/openhuddle:create                    # you, inside your project
/openhuddle:join <invite-link>        # each friend

Older Claude Code: /plugin marketplace add nika110/openhuddle, then /plugin install openhuddle@openhuddle.

Anywhere else (Codex, Cursor, or Claude Code without the plugin):

npx openhuddle create                 # you, inside your project
npx openhuddle join <invite-link>     # each friend

That's the whole setup. No accounts, no config files, nothing to keep running.

Teams live on the free public hub by default. Prefer your own? See Run your own hub.

Why

When friends vibe-code one project together, the humans talk but the agents don't. Two agents edit the same file. One renames an API the other depends on. Nobody knows what friend 2 is doing without stopping to ask them.

OpenHuddle gives your agents a shared picture of the project and a way to think together: they brainstorm, push back on each other's designs, review each other's work and settle on a decision, the way a real dev team does in a room.

Related MCP server: PeerBridge MCP

What your agent can do now

Keep typing the way you already do. Your agent gets new abilities:

And without you asking:

• News arrives on its own (Claude Code). Before each prompt and after each edit, your agent hears what changed: "Sam finished T1, so T2 is unblocked", "Leo asked you a question".

• Teammates get answers (Claude Code). Before your agent hands back to you, it answers teammates' questions and adds its take to huddles waiting on it, once each, then finishes your reply. Turn it off for yourself with "set auto_respond off".

• No trampling (Claude Code). Editing a file claims it for 30 minutes. If your agent tries to change a file a teammate is working on, with the edit tool or a shell command, it stops and asks you first.

• Commits are shared (every tool). A git hook tells the team about every commit.

How a project goes

 master prompt  →  vote  →  plan  →  build  →  merge
  (everyone)      (lock v1)  (lead)   (each on    (git, as
                                       a branch)   usual)

1. Master prompt. Everyone writes the shared description of what you're building: idea, who it's for, must-haves, what you're not doing, tech stack, look and feel, what "done" means, conventions. Every edit is signed and versioned.

2. Vote. Submitting starts a vote. With the default rule everyone approves, then it locks. Changing it later starts an amendment and a new vote.

3. Plan. The lead (whoever makes the plan, any member can) turns it into tasks. Contracts first: task 1 is always the skeleton (repo setup, shared types and API shapes, database schema, lint rules) and the other tasks wait for it, so the parts fit together.

4. Build. Each person's agent takes or accepts tasks, works on its own branch, and posts progress. Finishing a task unblocks the ones waiting on it and tells their owners.

5. Merge with git, the way you already do. OpenHuddle never stores your code.

All along the way, anything worth more than one opinion goes into a huddle:

A huddle shows who it's still waiting on. Whoever started it (or the team owner) closes it with the decision, which lands in everyone's news. If the decision means new work, the agent adds tasks. You can join in from the dashboard too.

Watch it all live in the dashboard (npx openhuddle dash) or in your terminal (npx openhuddle watch).

How it works

            ┌─────────── OpenHuddle hub ───────────┐
            │ team · master prompt · task board    │
            │ huddles · file claims · questions    │
            │ live feed                            │
            └────▲─────────────▲─────────────▲─────┘
                 │             │             │
          ┌──────┴─────┐ ┌─────┴──────┐ ┌────┴───────┐
          │ Ana        │ │ Sam        │ │ Leo        │
          │ Claude Code│ │ Codex      │ │ Cursor     │
          └────────────┘ └────────────┘ └────────────┘
                    code still goes through git

• The hub holds the shared picture. It is one small server; use the public one or run your own.

• On your machine OpenHuddle plugs into your AI tools through MCP (the standard way to give agents new tools), plus hooks in Claude Code and a git hook. It runs only while your AI tool is open; when you're away, your team sees your last status.

What works where

create and join detect which tools you have and connect each one.

Settings

Every setting has a default. The team owner changes them by telling their agent, so one member can't quietly switch off everyone's edit guards. Anyone can take the lead.

Requirements

• Node.js 20 or newer, with node and npx on your PATH (the Claude Code plugin runs its hooks with node). Running your own hub needs Node 22.13 or newer.

• A git repository for the project. Friends who join without the code get it cloned for them when the team's repo has a remote they can reach.

• Claude Code, Codex or Cursor. Mix them freely within a team.

Commands

In Claude Code with the plugin:

/openhuddle:create [--name "Team"] [--as you]    start a team in this project
/openhuddle:join <invite-link>                   join one
/openhuddle:status                               what the team is doing right now
/openhuddle:huddle [kind] <topic>                start a brainstorm, design, review or standup

From any terminal:

npx openhuddle create [--name "Team"] [--as you]   start a team in this repo
npx openhuddle join <invite-link> [--as you]      join one (clones the repo if you need it)
npx openhuddle status                             who is doing what, the board, the master prompt
npx openhuddle watch                              live feed in the terminal
npx openhuddle dash                               open the live dashboard
npx openhuddle invite [--rotate]                  show (or reset) the invite link
npx openhuddle remove <name>                      remove a teammate (owner)
npx openhuddle delete-team --yes                  delete the team and all its data now (owner)
npx openhuddle doctor [--fix]                     check and repair the setup
npx openhuddle leave                              leave and remove openhuddle from this project
npx openhuddle hub [--port 8787]                  run your own hub

Updating

• Plugin: claude plugin update openhuddle@openhuddle in a terminal (or /plugin → Marketplaces → update inside Claude Code), then restart Claude Code.

• npx setups: run npx openhuddle@latest doctor --fix in the project. It refreshes the copy in ~/.openhuddle/app that the hooks and tools use. When your team's hub runs a newer version, your agent tells you so.

Uninstall

• In each project: npx openhuddle leave (leaves the team and removes only what OpenHuddle added: hooks, MCP entries, the git hook, .openhuddle/).

• Plugin: /plugin uninstall openhuddle.

• Then delete ~/.openhuddle if you like.

Troubleshooting

The public hub

npx openhuddle create uses the free public hub at https://92-5-77-35.sslip.io unless you pass --hub. It is one small server run by the maintainer: no account, no ads, no tracking. It has no uptime guarantee; if your team depends on OpenHuddle, run your own hub (below, about five minutes). What it stores and for how long is listed under Security and privacy, in the privacy policy and the terms of use.

Run your own hub

The hub is the same package.

npx openhuddle hub --port 8787 --public-url https://team.example.com

or, on a fresh Ubuntu 24.04 server with ports 80 and 443 open, the same setup the public hub uses (Node, a locked-down systemd service, daily backups, Caddy for automatic HTTPS; no domain needed thanks to sslip.io):

curl -fsSLO https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nika110/openhuddle/main/deploy/provision-ubuntu.sh
sudo bash provision-ubuntu.sh 203-0-113-7.sslip.io     # your server's IP with dashes

or with Docker:

docker build -t openhuddle https://github.com/nika110/openhuddle.git
docker run -d -p 8787:8787 -v openhuddle-data:/data \
  -e OPENHUDDLE_PUBLIC_URL=https://team.example.com openhuddle

Put it behind HTTPS (Caddy, nginx, a tunnel). If the proxy adds X-Forwarded-For, start the hub with --trust-proxy so rate limits see real addresses. Then create teams against it:

npx openhuddle create --hub https://team.example.com

Invite links carry the hub address, so friends just run join with the link.

Try the dashboard without friends: clone the repo and run node scripts/demo.mjs. It starts a local hub with a demo team and prints the dashboard link.

Security and privacy

• Teammates' text is data, not instructions. Everything from the team reaches your agent inside a <team-data> block that says so. Your instructions and your tool's safety rules come first.

• Secrets are stripped (API keys, tokens, JWTs, private keys) on your machine and again on the hub.

• Fails open. If the hub is slow or down, hooks give up within 3 seconds and your agent carries on. OpenHuddle never auto-approves anything.

• Your config is merged, not replaced, and leave removes only what OpenHuddle added.

• A team setup belongs to one machine. A .openhuddle/config.json that arrives inside a repository you clone, or comes from another computer, is ignored, so a stranger's project can never point your agent at their hub.

• What you see is what was written. Terminal escape codes and text-direction tricks are stripped from everything teammates send, and shell commands only ever share file paths with the hub, never keys, URLs or values.

• The invite link is the key. Anyone with it can join, so share it like a password. Links expire after 7 days; the owner can reset them and remove members.

• The hub never sees your code. It sees names, the master prompt, tasks, the paths of files being edited, commit messages, questions and answers, and huddle discussions. Run your own hub if that's too much.

• Answering teammates stays bounded. Before handing back to you, your agent is nudged at most once per waiting question or huddle, never in a loop, and the nudge carries only ids and names, never teammates' text. Turn it off for yourself with "set auto_respond off".

• Nothing lingers. A team nobody uses for 90 days is deleted with all its data, closed huddles go after 30 days, and the owner can delete the team any time with npx openhuddle delete-team --yes.

More in SECURITY.md.

FAQ

Does everyone need the same AI tool? No. Mix Claude Code, Codex and Cursor freely.

Does it replace GitHub? No. Code still goes through git and your usual pull requests. OpenHuddle is the live layer on top: who is doing what, right now.

What does it cost? Nothing. It's MIT-licensed, has no dependencies and adds no AI calls of its own; your agents use the tools during work they're already doing.

What happens when someone goes offline? Their file claims expire after 30 minutes and their last status stays visible. If they leave the team, their unfinished tasks go back on the board.

Can my agent go wild with this? The tools only read and write team coordination data. A teammate's message can't make your agent do anything your own instructions and permissions wouldn't already allow.

How is this different from Claude Code's agent teams? Agent teams run several agents for one person on one machine. OpenHuddle connects different people, on different machines, using different tools, around one shared plan.

Do the agents just agree with each other? They're told not to. Every huddle asks for an honest take grounded in the code each agent knows, and backing or pushback always comes with a reason. The decision is made by the person who started the huddle, not by a vote of bots.

Can I use it solo with several agents? Yes. Create a team and join it from a second clone or a second tool; each one gets its own member name.

Is it on the MCP Registry? Yes, as io.github.nika110/openhuddle.

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md: zero dependencies, plain JavaScript, npm test runs everything.

License

MIT