FEATURES

How a pixel crew actually divides the work.

Starting with handing everything to a department, then assigning work, approvals, the camera, the task log, and cross-LLM handoffs — down to making your crew look the way you want. Here's the full tour.

SIGNATURE · 2.0.0

Hand the work to a department, and let the lead decide.

A department is two or more NPCs sharing one workspace, one of them designated the lead. Create one directly with the Department Creator: fill in a purpose, headcount, and provider, and AI drafts complementary roles and personas — you just pick who leads. From then on, every time you hand off work you only write a goal and acceptance criteria; the lead decides whether to consult an expert, ask for a review, or run a full task chain.

  • AI-planned departments: fill in purpose, headcount, and provider; AI drafts complementary roles and you pick a lead
  • Quick Consult / Quick Review: two-step, read-only collaboration — an expert advises or reviews, the lead executes and finalizes
  • Department Mission: a 2–5 step task chain that always starts with execute, with a different NPC doing each review step; failed reviews get up to two automatic correction rounds
  • Only five things stop for you: plan approval, an inconclusive review, a used-up correction budget, a failed step, or a member going offline — everything else hands off automatically
  • No mode ever auto-commits, pushes, merges, tags, or releases, and none of them touch your authentication
DEPARTMENT LEAD
QUICK CONSULT

Expert advises → lead executes (2 steps, read-only)

QUICK REVIEW

Expert reviews → lead finalizes (2 steps, read-only)

DEPARTMENT MISSION

2–5 step chain, execute/review alternating owners

MISSION — HAND TO DEPARTMENTLIVE
Hand-to-department dialog: only a goal and acceptance criteria are required; confirming hands it to the department lead to route automatically to Consult, Review, or a Mission
NEEDS ATTENTION — YOUR DECISIONLIVE
A department's status turned to needs attention: the screen lists why it stopped and the choices available for the next step
SIGNATURE · 2.3.0

Same crew, all the way down to a real terminal.

Pixel is the default pixel-office view. Switch from the top bar into the full-screen Professional workbench, or open Black Window directly — it runs a real Claude Code or Codex CLI session, not a simulation. All three modes share the same accounts, models, and safety confirmations, so whichever view you act from, the others are looking at the same real state.

  • Persistent sessions: the daemon keeps the real terminal identity — surviving navigation, reloads, and even switching browser tabs
  • Per-pane controls: each Agent pane can select Claude or Codex, a shared or named account, its model, and auto-approve mode
  • Freely arranged panes: organize multiple terminals in workspace tabs — drag, resize, split, minimize, maximize
  • Studio rail: Alt+1–9 switches local workspaces, with a read-only branch, commit, dirty-file, and ahead/behind summary
  • Terminal font size is adjustable and saved; local voice input becomes editable text first and never sends or executes automatically
PROFESSIONAL — FULL-SCREEN WORKBENCHLIVE
Professional Workbench: a report index and quick-switch buttons on the left, the selected NPC's work stream in the center, and a command input at the bottom
BLACK WINDOW — A REAL CLILIVE
Black Window: a list of workspace tabs on the left, and a real Codex CLI terminal pane on the right showing a hooks-trust confirmation prompt

▲ Captured from the real app — the NPC and workspace shown are a demo setup for this screenshot.

ASSIGN — NPC 1 RECEIVED A TASKREC
Recording: after being assigned a task, an NPC walks from its desk to a file-reading workstation and starts working, showing elapsed seconds and a streaming output bubble overhead; a neighboring coworker cheers on completion
SCENE 01 · ASSIGN WORK

Assign it, then watch it go to work.

Type a task and the NPC walks to the matching workstation — to read files, write code, search the web, or use the terminal. Its nameplate shows elapsed time while a speech bubble streams live output.

  • Workstation = tool: where the character stands shows what the agent is using
  • Completion reactions: nearby teammates celebrate success; failures produce a small storm cloud
  • This is an unedited recording of a real task
APPROVAL — WAITINGLIVE
Close-up: NPC one has an 'Allow this command?' approval bar overhead with deny, allow-for-task, and allow-once buttons; its nameplate shows a 9-second wait
SCENE 02 · APPROVALS

See who needs you, at a glance.

When an agent wants to run a command, its NPC stops, paces with a question mark overhead, and the approval controls float right beside the character. No window switching, no digging through logs — one glance across the office tells you who's stuck.

  • Three choices: deny, allow for this task, or allow once
  • Three auto-approval levels: off, safe (a read-only allowlist), or full (dangerous commands still force a confirmation)
  • Each NPC has independent settings
RADIAL — CONTEXT MENULIVE
Right-clicking NPC one fans out five circular icon buttons along an arc — rename, persona, appearance, room, and remove; a cat happens to walk across the floor on the left
SCENE 03 · RADIAL MENU

One right-click, every setting for this character.

Right-click any NPC to rename it, edit its persona, change its look, switch rooms, or safely remove it — and to ask another NPC at the same workstation for a read-only Consult or Review. For a bigger job, just create a department.

  • Persistent personas: give an NPC a durable role ("You're a frontend QA — only raise issues, never touch code") injected through each CLI's native mechanism; it survives restarts
  • Pixel Workshop: switch looks or upload your own animated GIF avatar
  • Cross-LLM handoff: let Claude summarize its progress partway through and hand off to Codex (or the other way around)
CAMERA — PAN & ZOOMREC
Recording: using the lower-left slider to zoom into the office, dragging to pan the view, then resetting to the default framing in one click
SCENE 04 · CAMERA

Your office, your point of view.

Drag empty space to pan, use the wheel or the lower-left slider to zoom — always in crisp integer steps. Double-click the floor or press ⟳ to reset to the default framing.

  • Zoom in to follow one NPC, or pull out to see the whole office
  • Nameplates, bubbles, and approval controls move with the camera
  • Tablet-friendly: one-finger pan plus a slider for zoom
SCENE 05 · TASK LOG

Every step, out in the open.

The left panel shows a task in progress: the agent explains what it's about to look up while a WebSearch tool's input and output stream in live. The right panel shows the finished result: the final reply rendered as full Markdown — lists, links, sources — plus the tool-call count and total duration.

  • Two views: summary mode for the conclusion, activity mode for every tool call
  • Searchable: full-text search across this NPC's task history; one-click copy for code blocks
  • Desktop notifications: get a system notification when a task finishes or needs approval while you're in another window (off by default)
RUNNING — TOOL STREAMLIVE
Task log while running: NPC five explains its search plan while a WebSearch tool's INPUT and OUTPUT JSON streams in below
COMPLETE — FINAL RESPONSELIVE
Completed task: the final response renders lists and links as Markdown, noting 3 tool activities and a 36.1-second duration
SHIFT CHANGE — HANDOFFLIVE
Handoff dialog: NPC five handing off from Codex to Claude Code, showing the target LLM's work-energy bar plus a list of cross-LLM handoff caveats and a confirmation checkbox
OFFICE POWER — GLOBAL USAGELIVE
Global work-energy panel: Claude Code showing session, weekly, and per-model usage bars with reset times; Codex showing 7-day usage
SCENE 06 · HANDOFFS & ENERGY

Switch brains without dropping the work.

Running low on Codex allowance, or is this one better suited to Claude? Hand an NPC off between LLMs: the system first summarizes the current work, then hands it to a fresh session on the other model.

  • Global work energy: the top bar always shows live usage for both CLIs; open it for session, weekly, and per-model reset times
  • Check energy before switching: see the target LLM's live usage before handing off, so you don't run out right after switching
  • Honest warnings: it lists exactly what won't carry over (tool state, pending approvals) and requires a confirmation checkbox before proceeding; works Claude ⇄ Codex in either direction
SCENE 07 · PIXEL WORKSHOP

Make your crew look the way you want.

Swap between five official crew designs, or upload your own pixel GIF — animation timing is preserved and the avatar is automatically fitted to the NPC's size in the office, walking, working, and celebrating as usual.

  • Animated GIF avatars: up to 320×320 and 120 frames, looping at their original frame timing
  • Safe to switch: choosing an official look never deletes your custom character — switch back anytime
  • Pair it with the persona system so your "financial analyst" actually looks like one
OFFICIAL — CREWLIVE
Pixel Workshop's official tab: five official crew looks available — Classic Crew, Neon Engineer, Signal Analyst, Spark Designer, and Night Shift Ops
CUSTOM — GIF AVATARLIVE
Pixel Workshop's custom tab: previewing a blue animated pixel character, with GIF size, file, frame, and decode limits listed on the right
SECURITY MODEL

Your API key is safe — because there is no API key.

Pixel Crew isn't another service asking you to paste in a key. It orchestrates and visualizes the official CLIs already installed and signed in on your machine. Authentication, usage, and billing all stay in those tools — Pixel Crew never touches them.

Localhost only

The server listens on 127.0.0.1 and is never exposed publicly; the browser talks to it over a local WebSocket.

Native CLI authentication

Sign-in is managed by claude/codex themselves — Pixel Crew only invokes them, never stores any credential.

Data stays local

Conversation history, NPC settings, and avatars all live in a local SQLite database and folders — no cloud upload, no telemetry.

Dangerous-command guardrails

Even with full auto-approval on, destructive commands like rm -rf and disk operations still force a confirmation; a department Mission never auto-commits, pushes, merges, tags, or releases either.