Show HN: Intent-lens – see what Claude Code is about to do, before it does it

See what Claude is about to do — before it does it.

_{Part of the claude-mods marketplace.}

_{A real Claude Code session with intent-lens loaded.}

A Claude Mod that shows the intent of a tool call in one line above the prompt, while the call is still pending.

Claude Code shows you a tool row after Claude has already decided to act. intent-lens translates the call into a human sentence first, in the place your eyes already are. It reads either the tool's own arguments (free, instant) or asks Claude to phrase it (a few tokens).

In auto mode, Claude Code moves faster than you can read, and the commands it writes are made for the shell, not for you. A find | xargs | awk pipeline tells you almost nothing at a glance, and once it runs, the call folds into a summary like Ran 2 shell commands.

intent-lens puts the meaning where your eyes already are, just above the prompt, while the call is still in flight:

• Understand it at a glance. One sentence for the call, and each stage of a pipeline in plain words.
• Catch the dangerous ones. A recursive delete, a force-push orcurl … | sh turns the line red and raises a warning, even when the band is hidden.
• Pay nothing for it. By default it reads the tool's own arguments: no tokens, no network.

Register the catalog once, then install this mod:

/plugin marketplace add Dhananjay-JSR/claude-mods
/plugin install intent-lens@claude-mods

From your shell:

claude plugin marketplace add Dhananjay-JSR/claude-mods
claude plugin install intent-lens@claude-mods

Installs are cached. To take a newer version later:

claude plugin update intent-lens
claude --plugin-dir /path/to/claude-mods/plugins/intent-lens

To load it without typing the flag, alias it in your shell:

alias claude-lens='claude --plugin-dir /path/to/claude-mods/plugins/intent-lens'

To load it in every session, add the directory to CLAUDE_CODE_PLUGIN_DIRS (:-separated).

Check it loaded with /plugin (Tab to Installed) or just run /intent.

auto (the default) draws the local line immediately, then upgrades it with Claude for the calls that read worst — edits, unknown tools, and MCP tools. The band never sits blank while the model thinks.

▸ Bash   Count the top five languages across your repos
         6 steps · fetch → extract values → sort → count repeats → sort by number → top 5
✦ Edit   Add a null guard to the token parser
⚠ Bash   delete files recursively

The command itself stays in Claude Code's tool row. The band answers what it means.

Switch engines with /intent mode local, auto, or model.

The local engine is a pure function of the tool name and arguments — no I/O, no latency.

Bash is the interesting one: Claude Code's Bash tool already requires Claude to describe each command, so that description is the stated intent — normally buried in the tool row.

Under a pipeline, a second dim line decodes it stage by stage: 6 steps · fetch → extract values → sort → count repeats → sort by number → top 5. Only pipelines of three or more stages get that line, because a two-step chain reads fine as it is. The mapping is literal — curl → fetch, jq 'select(…)' → keep matching rows, uniq -c → count repeats, head -5 → top 5 — and quote-aware, so a | inside a jq program is not a new stage. /intent words terse switches to the shorter vocabulary (pick fields, rank). It explains the mechanics; the full command stays in Claude Code's tool row.

The model engine sends the tool name, a bounded view of the arguments (900 characters), and the local draft to haiku. It asks for at most 12 words, hard-caps the answer at 110 characters, and waits at most 1.5 seconds. auto also reaches for the model when a shell command arrives without a description, since the local line would then have to fall back to the raw command. A failure, a refusal, or a slow reply silently keeps the local line: the intent must never break a call.

Shell commands are matched against patterns that can destroy work or reach outside the project: recursive rm, git reset --hard, git clean -fd, force-push, DROP/ TRUNCATE, mkfs/ dd, fork bombs, curl … | sh, sudo, chmod -R 777, package publishes.

A match turns the marker red and raises a toast. It is computed locally and always shown — in model mode, and even when the band is hidden. It is a reminder, not a sandbox: it matches the text of the command.

• local mode sends nothing anywhere and costs no tokens.
• auto mode calls the model only for edits, unknown tools, MCP tools, and a shell command Claude didn't describe — a few hundred tokens per edit.
• model mode calls it for every tool call, which adds up to 1.5 seconds of latency per call.
• Model calls use your own Claude Code credentials and go through $.model.complete , exactly like any other request the session makes.
• Headless runs (claude -p , Agent SDK) never raiseui.render , and the mod calls the model only after that event has fired, so such a run spends nothing.

plugins/intent-lens/
├── .claude-plugin/plugin.json   the manifest
├── hooks/hooks.json             {"modules": ["./register.js"]} — makes it a mod
├── hooks/register.js            hooks, both engines, risk rules
├── tests/intent.test.mjs        hooks run against a stubbed API
├── assets/logo.svg              the mark
├── assets/demo.svg              the band, illustrated (all three markers)
└── assets/screenshot-*.png      a real session

claude plugin test runs .test.ts files inside a session; these tests are plain Node instead, so they need no session, network, or credentials. They load the hooks module from a temporary copy and fire every hook — including session.start — against a stubbed mods API. Each test gets a fresh copy of the module, so one test's mode, history, or UI flag can never leak into the next.

node tests/intent.test.mjs

Run it from this folder. The repository's CI runs the same tests and claude plugin validate --strict on every push, then installs the plugin from the marketplace entry to prove that path works too.

• The band shows the call in flight , not a history, and clears the moment the call returns. With parallel calls, the newest takes the line and an older one finishing does not erase it.
• Calls made by subagents are skipped, so one line is always the main thread's.
• Nothing is drawn in headless runs, where there is no UI.
• The model line is a hint about what Claude says it is doing; the arguments are the ground truth.
• The band is a shared surface: it sits above whatever other mods draw, and the user can collapse it with Ctrl+X Ctrl+A .

MIT.