nikiomori

Kelp — Development skill for Claude Code

Development community

A native macOS IDE where CLI coding agents work side by side with the code they touch.

How to install Kelp

This entry records only its repository, not the path inside it, so there is no exact command to give. Open nikiomori/kelp and copy the folder into ~/.claude/skills/, or the file into ~/.claude/agents/.

What Kelp does

A native macOS IDE where CLI coding agents work side by side with the code they touch.

Alternatives in Development

Claude Coder — Kodu is an autonomous coding agent that lives in your IDE 5.2k ★
OpenSquirrel — For people who get distracted by agents 1.3k ★
Claude Code Zh Cn — Claude Code CLI 简体中文本地化 / 汉化插件；支持 macOS、Linux、WSL、Windows 与新版 native，一行安装，更新后自动修复 721 ★

README

Kelp

A native macOS IDE between a classic editor like VS Code and an agent app like Claude Desktop: agents work side by side, and the code they touch is one tab away to read, review and edit.

![An agent's finished change next to its diff, with every workspace's agents in the sidebar](docs/screenshots/agent-and-diff.png)

Code at hand. Editor with language servers, file tree, diffs, browser; any tab in any split.
Agents first. Any CLI agent, live status, review as a diff; agents keep working after you quit the app.
Extensible. Panels, commands and themes come from extensions; a JSON file is enough.
Native. Swift + AppKit, terminal on libghostty. No Electron, no cloud, no telemetry.

![An agent waiting on a question; the sidebar counts who needs you](docs/screenshots/agent-asks.png)

Requires macOS 14+.

Install

Download `Kelp.dmg` from [Releases](https://github.com/nikiomori/kelp/releases/latest) and drag Kelp to Applications; it updates itself (Kelp › Check for Updates…). Kelp's terminals have `kelp` on their PATH; for other terminals: `ln -s /Applications/Kelp.app/Contents/MacOS/kelp /usr/local/bin/kelp`.

Build and run

scripts/build-ghostty.sh         # once: libghostty into Vendor/ (downloads zig 0.16 into a cache)
swift build                      # everything
swift test                       # all tests
scripts/bundle.sh                # dist/Kelp.app + dist/Kelp.dmg (universal, release)
SIGN_ID="Developer ID Application: …" NOTARY_PROFILE=kelp scripts/bundle.sh   # signed + notarized
scripts/publish.sh               # GitHub release + update feed for that DMG (bump the version in Resources/Info.plist first)

For quick iteration: `swift build && .build/debug/KelpApp` (the app starts `kelpd` next to it if needed).

CLI

kelp status
kelp session new --agent claude                                # in the workspace of the current folder
kelp worktree create feat/login | list | current | note "half done"
kelp ter