Claude Thing

claude-thing

Turn a Spotify Car Thing into a desk monitor for Claude Code: every session at a
glance, a queue of everything waiting on you, live usage bars, and permission
approve/deny from the dial.
A fork of Nocturne 4.0, the
custom Car Thing firmware by usenocturne.
Nothing Nocturne does is removed — this adds a second mode alongside it, and
the two swap at runtime, so the device stays a music player when you want one.
*Updating to work off Nocturne 4.1 Soon*

No Car Thing? You can still run this. Skip to
Try it without the hardware.

What you'll need

- A Mac (Apple Silicon or Intel) — this only runs on macOS.
- A Spotify Car Thing and a USB-C cable that carries data — the cheap
  charge-only cables will not work.
- Google Chrome, for the flashing tool. Safari cannot do it.
- Claude Code already installed and working in your terminal.
- About 30 minutes, most of it waiting on downloads.

Steps 1–4 below all use the Terminal app. If you've never opened it: press
Cmd+Space, type Terminal, press Return. Commands in grey boxes get pasted in
one at a time, each followed by Return. Nothing here asks you to write code.

Step 1 — Install the two prerequisites

Paste this to check whether you already have them:

Two version numbers means you're set — go to Step 2. An error like
command not found means that piece is missing:

- Node — download the "LTS" installer from
  nodejs.org and run it. Version 18 or newer.
- Claude Code — follow
  the install guide,
  then run claude once and sign in.

Close and reopen Terminal after installing either one, then run the check again.

Step 2 — Set up the Mac side

This is the piece that watches your Claude Code sessions and feeds the device.

It prints a checklist as it goes, and takes a few minutes. It installs its
dependencies,…