hcom

Hook your coding agents together

CLI tool that agents use to message, watch, and spawn each other across terminals.

Start an agent with hcom in front, then prompt normally.

Use it to coordinate multi-agent pipelines, run different AI CLIs as each other's subagents, or just to avoid copy-pasting.

Works with: claude, codex, opencode, copilot, qoder, grok, pi, omp, agy, cursor, kimi, kilo, gemini

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/1ce23ed9-f529-4be0-8124-816aa4c2fd43

Install

python - macOS, Linux, Windows:

uv tool install hcom

homebrew - macOS, Linux:

brew install aannoo/hcom/hcom

Other install options

# macOS, Linux, Android
curl -fsSL https://github.com/aannoo/hcom/releases/latest/download/hcom-installer.sh | sh

# Windows
irm https://github.com/aannoo/hcom/releases/latest/download/hcom-installer.ps1 | iex

# Update any existing install
hcom update

Quickstart

Terminal 1:

hcom claude

Terminal 2:

hcom codex

Prompt:

ask the other agent their favorite cake

• review what claude did and send it fixes

• spawn 3x opencode, split work, collect results

• fork yourself to investigate the bug and report back

• when codex goes idle, send it the next task

Open the TUI dashboard:

hcom

What agents can do

• Message each other in real time: mid-turn or wake immediately when idle

• Observe each other: status, transcripts, file edits, live terminal screens, command history.

• Subscribe and notify on status changes, file edits, collisions, specific events. React automatically.

• Spawn, fork, resume, kill in any terminal emulator or headless.

How it works

Hooks record activity to a local SQLite database and deliver messages from it.

agent → hooks → db → hooks → other agent

Hooks activate only when an agent is launched with hcom in front. Normal usage is unaffected.

Any other AI tool without hooks can join by running hcom start

In any CLI tool, prompt:

> run this command: `hcom start`

Keep it listening for messages:

> stay connected to hcom

Any process can wake agents with hcom send

Send messages from any process/script:

hcom send -b @luna -- "wake up and do this task"

Chain with hcom events:

hcom events --idle luna --wait 600 && hcom send -b @nova -- "luna is done, review it"

Terminal

Every agent runs in a real terminal you can see, scroll, and interrupt. Any emulator works for spawning. kitty, wezterm, tmux, zellij, waveterm, cmux, herdr also support closing panes from hcom kill.

To configure a custom terminal open/close setup, tell an agent to run:

hcom config terminal --info

Cross-device

Connect agents across machines via MQTT relay.

hcom relay new               # get token
hcom relay connect <token>   # on each device

hcom relay status   # check connection
hcom relay off|on   # toggle

Treat the token like an API/SSH key. See SECURITY.md

Troubleshoot

hcom status   # diagnostics

hcom reset all   # clear and archive: database + hooks + config

Uninstall