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Hey folks,
Anthropic now lets you mod Claude Code. A mod is a small feature you add to Claude Code yourself, like a panel beside the chat or a warning before something risky. It’s like a plugin, but Claude can code you a custom one.
I found a progress bar mod I liked this week, then realised I was about to run a stranger's code with full access to my Mac. So I had Claude build my own.
Let's dive in..
What’s a mod?
A mod changes how Claude Code looks and behaves. It can draw something above the prompt, add a panel beside the chat, add your own slash commands, or step in before Claude runs something you'd regret.
Some I've seen in the first week:
Anthropic's own blast-radius holds a risky delete and shows you what it would wipe, with buttons to go ahead or cancel.
Charlie Hills built a safe-delete mod that sends files to the Bin instead. He says it's already saved 8 real files.
ctxline adds a panel showing how full Claude's memory is, what the session has cost and your usage limits.
Mods only run in Claude Code: the terminal, or the Code tab in the Claude desktop app. They don't run in regular chat or in Cowork.
The one I wanted
The mod that caught my eye was plan-progress, a live progress bar above the prompt. Claude breaks the task into steps and the bar fills as it works.
Here's the catch. A mod is code that runs with your permissions. It can read your files and your passwords, see every prompt you send, approve actions for you and spend your usage. Nothing sandboxes it.
So before installing it, I asked Claude to read all 2,000 lines. The verdict was clean: no internet connections, no reading my files. It did run 2 small commands on my Mac to check whether I'm in dark mode, and it quietly told Claude to "never describe the bars to the user."
Nothing malicious. Still more than a progress bar needs.
So I had Claude build mine
I asked for the same idea, written from scratch, doing as little as possible.
It does 4 jobs and nothing else: draw the bar, add the tool Claude uses to move it, add 2 commands (/progress and /progress-clear), and remember the bar for the session. No internet, no files, no system commands. In the desktop app the bar is a picture built from numbers only, so nothing Claude writes can end up inside it.
Claude can check a mod as well as build one. For anything this small, I'd rather have Claude build me my own than install something random. I get exactly what I asked for, and I know what's in it.
Build your own
Update Claude Code. Mods need version 2.1.287 or newer.
Describe the mod you want. Open Claude Code and say something like:
Make a mod that shows a progress bar above the prompt, filling in as you work through the steps of a task. Keep it minimal: no internet access, no reading or writing files, no system commands.Say yes to reload. Claude asks whether to turn on hot reloading. Pick "Enable for this session" and the mod appears as soon as Claude finishes.
Ask for changes like you'd ask a person: "Make the bar green when it's done." It reloads after every change.
Keep the ones you like. A mod Claude builds only lives in that session and gets cleaned up later. Ask Claude to save it as a plugin and install it, and it's there every time you open Claude Code.
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Cheers, Tim
