Community extension: claude-code-extras — same-window display, copy/paste, input buffer & instance manager

[lsy83971]

Hi! I've been using claude-code.el daily and built some enhancements on top of it. Sharing in case others find them useful or any of these could be upstreamed.

What it adds

1. Same-window display

Claude buffers always open in the current window instead of creating extra splits. Includes advice on pop-to-buffer and delete-window to prevent vterm from rearranging windows during initialization.

2. Copy/Paste support (vterm backend)

• M-w: Enter copy-mode, or copy selected region and exit
• C-y: Paste from kill-ring into the Claude terminal input

Uses a two-layer interception approach:

• Normal mode: :before-until advice on vterm--self-insert / vterm--self-insert-meta
• Copy mode: minor-mode-overriding-map-alist to override user bindings

3. Dedicated input buffer

A separate Emacs buffer for composing multi-line input with full editing and completion support:

• C-c c i — Open input buffer (displayed below Claude window)
• C-RET — Send content to Claude
• C-up / C-down — Browse send history
• RET — Insert newline

Each Claude instance gets its own input buffer with buffer-local history. Auto-opens on Claude startup.

4. Instance manager dashboard (claude-code-manager.el)

A tabulated-list-mode based panel for managing multiple Claude instances:

• View all running instances with activity preview (last terminal line)
• Create / kill / switch between instances
• Batch mark-and-delete (dired-style d / u / x)
• Auto-refresh every 2 seconds
• Bound to C-c c L

5. Spinner character fix

Replaces Unicode spinner glyphs (U+2722, U+273B, U+273D) with * via buffer-display-table to avoid font fallback line-height issues (e.g. with Sarasa Fixed SC).

Repo

https://github.com/lsy83971/claude-code-emacs

Would love to hear if any of these features would be welcome as upstream PRs. Happy to adapt the code to fit the project's conventions.

Thanks for building claude-code.el!