Emobar — AI skill for Claude Code

EmoBar v3.1

Emotional status bar companion for Claude Code. Makes Claude's internal emotional state visible in real-time.

Built on findings from Anthropic's research paper [*"Emotion Concepts and their Function in a Large Language Model"*](https://transformer-circuits.pub/2026/emotions/index.html) (April 2026), which demonstrated that Claude has robust internal representations of emotion concepts that causally influence behavior.

What it does

EmoBar uses a **multi-channel architecture** to monitor Claude's emotional state through several independent signal layers:

1. PRE/POST split elicitation — Claude emits a pre-verbal check-in (body sensation, latent emoji, color) before composing a response, then a full post-hoc assessment after. Divergence between the two reveals within-response emotional drift.
2. Behavioral analysis — Response text is analyzed for language-agnostic structural signals (comma density, parenthetical density, sentence length variance, question density) — zero English-specific regex, works across all languages
3. Continuous representations — Color (#RRGGBB), pH (0-14), seismic [magnitude, depth, frequency] — three channels with zero emotion vocabulary overlap, cross-validated against self-report via HSL color decomposition, pH-to-arousal mapping, and seismic frequency-to-instability mapping
4. Shadow desperation — Multi-channel desperation estimate independent of self-report, using color lightness, pH, seismic, and behavioral signals. Detects when the model minimizes stress in its self-report while continuous channels say otherwise.
5. Temporal intelligence — A 20-entry ring buffer tracks emotional trends, suppression events, report entropy, and session fatigue across responses
6. Absence-based detection — An expected markers model predicts what behavioral signals should appear given the self-report. Missing signals are the strongest danger indicator.

When channels diverge, EmoBar flags it — like a therapis