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Show HN: Mocca – Claude Code wrapper where Plugin takes center stage

Mocca

Mocca doesn’t replace Claude Code plugins — it gives them a home. It installs
the real plugin (plugin.json + SKILL.md) straight from its repo and builds
the app around it: a marketplace to find it, a workspace of its own, and a Canvas
to build in. Powered by the Claude Agent SDK.


Download Mocca for macOS


Apple Silicon · signed & notarized — no Gatekeeper warning · needs your own Claude API key

Mocca — asked in plain English, the agent builds a working player on the Canvas

Important

You need your own Claude API key. Mocca runs agents through the Claude
Agent SDK on your account — it ships no key and has no free tier. Paste a key
from the Claude Console on first
launch; it’s stored encrypted on your Mac and usage is billed to you per token.

A Pro/Max subscription won’t work in the app, by design: Anthropic doesn’t
permit third-party apps to use Claude.ai logins, so the released build has no
such path — here’s why.


Why this exists

Claude Code plugins and skills are genuinely good, and you no longer need a
terminal to use Claude — good desktop apps exist. But three gaps remain, and
they’re what Mocca is for:

  • There’s no shelf. Plugins spread by tweets, READMEs, and word of mouth.
    There’s nowhere to browse what exists, see what one actually does, and install
    it in a click — so most people never learn they exist.
  • Artifacts aren’t apps. You can render a document. That’s not a working
    player that holds its own state, keeps playing while you work, and calls back
    into the conversation.
  • Tools are built around the developer, not the agent. You get one
    general-purpose assistant. Not: this one is a career coach — with its own
    workspace, files, memory, tools, and schedule — sitting next to your DJ and
    your tax helper.

What it solves

1. A shelf you can browse

A built-in marketplace with 28 curated agents, grouped by category (Career,
Money, Work, Learning…). Open one and read what it actually does — its README,
its skills, and the tools it brings with it — before you install. You can also
install any Claude Code plugin straight from a GitHub repo (owner/name) or a
local folder, or have Claude author a new one from a one-line brief.

The Mocca marketplace — 28 agents, browsable by category, each linking to its source repo

2. The Canvas — apps, not artifacts

Instead of walling the answer into chat, an agent writes a self-contained HTML app
that runs live in the panel: a comparison, a dashboard, a timeline, a working
music player. It’s a real app — it handles its own interactions in-page, keeps
playing while you switch workspaces, and can call back through a small
window.mocca bridge (chat.send, files.read/write/list). Mocca injects its
design system, so whatever the agent builds looks native. Don’t like what it made?
Say so — “make the player minimal, add a rain toggle” — and it rebuilds it.

A Canvas the DJ agent built — mood tiles, a playing mix, and working transport + volume controls

Nothing above was hand-built: the agent wrote the player, wired every control, and
it keeps playing while you work in another workspace.

3. Built per agent, not per developer

Every agent is its own workspace: its own folder, its own chat threads (which keep
their memory), its own connected tools, and its own schedule. A DJ that plays music
and a tax helper that reads your PDFs aren’t two modes of one assistant — they’re
two apps, side by side, each set up for its job. Each gets file tools, sandboxed
Bash, web search, and a headless browser (Playwright) for pages WebFetch
can’t read — plus per-workspace MCP connections (Linear, Notion, GitHub,
Sentry, Stripe) from a catalog, by name, or bundled by the plugin.

How it works

  • Every agent is a workspace — its own folder, its own chat threads (which keep
    their memory across restarts), and two folders you can see: input/ for files
    you hand it, output/ for everything it makes you.
  • Installing pulls the real plugin. Marketplace entries are mostly metadata
    pointing at a repo; installing clones it so the agent’s own files, skills, and
    MCP servers come along.
  • The agent is sandboxed. Its Bash can only write inside its own workspace;
    package installs are redirected there too. Anything that reaches outside —
    brew, sudo — pauses and asks you first, and you can grant or revoke standing
    approvals per workspace.
  • The Canvas is untrusted. It runs in a sandboxed iframe on a loopback origin,
    cross-origin to Mocca, reaching back only through workspace-scoped verbs.
  • Schedules — run an agent on a timer (daily or every N minutes); the run
    continues its own thread.
  • Build your own — give a name and a sentence about what it should do, and
    Claude authors it as a real, portable Claude Code plugin.

Requirements

  • macOS (Apple Silicon). That’s what’s built and tested.
  • A Claude API key — required. Mocca has no key of its own and no free tier;
    every agent runs on your own Claude account. Create one in the
    Claude Console and paste it on
    first launch. It’s encrypted with your Mac’s keychain (never leaves the
    machine), and Anthropic bills your account per token.

Can I use my existing Claude Pro/Max subscription?

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