biff

biff

Team communication for engineers who never leave the terminal.

Named after the Berkeley dog whose 1980 mail notification program was part of the same BSD family as talk, wall, finger, who, and mesg. Biff resurrects the Unix communication vocabulary as MCP-native slash commands inside Claude Code.

Platforms: macOS, Linux

Quick Start

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/punt-labs/biff/0dfe5e3/install.sh | sh

Restart Claude Code twice. Type /who to see your team.

CLI only (no Claude Code plugin)

To install the biff CLI and MCP server without the Claude Code plugin --- for a non-Claude harness (Codex, Cursor, a plain terminal) or an org that blocks plugin installation --- pass --no-plugin:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/punt-labs/biff/0dfe5e3/install.sh | sh -s -- --no-plugin

The BIFF_NO_PLUGIN=1 environment variable does the same, for contexts that cannot pass arguments through the pipe:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/punt-labs/biff/0dfe5e3/install.sh | BIFF_NO_PLUGIN=1 sh

Missing claude or git auto-skips the plugin the same way. In CLI-only mode the plugin steps are skipped; everything else --- binary, PATH, and health check --- still runs. Add the plugin later with claude plugin marketplace add punt-labs/claude-plugins and claude plugin install biff@punt-labs.

uv tool install punt-biff
biff install
biff doctor

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/punt-labs/biff/0dfe5e3/install.sh -o install.sh
shasum -a 256 install.sh
cat install.sh
sh install.sh

Features

• MCP-native --- runs inside Claude Code as slash commands, no separate app
• Interactive REPL --- biff launches a terminal client with readline, real-time notifications, and modal talk
• BSD vocabulary --- /who, /write, /talk, /wall --- commands engineers already know
• NATS relay --- cross-machine presence and messaging over encrypted connections
• Agent-first --- agents show up in /who alongside humans, coordinate via /plan and /write
• Status bar --- live unread count, wall broadcasts, talk messages --- wraps your existing status line
• Zero config --- installs in one command, enables per-repo with /biff enable (a committed marker, on for the whole team)

What It Looks Like

See who's online

> /who

▶  NAME    TTY   IDLE  S  HOST       DIR                        PLAN
   kai     tty1  0:03  +  m2-mb-air  /Users/kai/code/myapp      refactoring auth module
   eric    tty2  1:22  +  m2-mb-air  /Users/eric/code/myapp     reviewing PR #47
   priya   tty1  0:00  +  priya-mbp  /Users/priya/code/myapp    writing integration tests

S is message status: + means accepting messages, - means do not disturb.

Send a message

> /write kai "auth module looks good, just one nit on the error handling"

Message sent to kai.

Check your inbox

> /read

▶  FROM   DATE              MESSAGE
   kai    Sat Feb 15 14:01  hey, ready for review?
   eric   Sat Feb 15 13:45  pushed the fix for the flaky test
   priya  Sat Feb 15 12:30  can you look at the migration script?

> /finger kai

▶  Login: kai                              Messages: on
   On since Sat Feb 15 14:01 (UTC) on tty1, idle 0:03
   Host: m2-mb-air  Dir: /Users/kai/code/myapp
   Plan:
    refactoring auth module

> /plan "debugging the websocket reconnect logic"

Plan: debugging the websocket reconnect logic

> /plan biff-ka4

Plan: biff-ka4: post-checkout hook: update plan from branch

> /last

▶  NAME    TTY   HOST       LOGIN             LOGOUT            DURATION
   kai     tty3  m2-mb-air  Sat Feb 22 14:01  still logged in   -
   kai     tty2  m2-mb-air  Sat Feb 22 11:30  Sat Feb 22 13:58  2:28
   eric    tty1  m2-mb-air  Sat Feb 22 09:15  Sat Feb 22 12:45  3:30