Open source · Hosted version coming soon

Never get a “quick question” again.

Understudy stands in for you on Slack. When a coworker wants to know where something lives, how a thing works, or what happens on deploy, they ask your understudy — and Claude answers from your code, read-only, while you stay in flow.

Hosted version for teams that don't want to run a server. Or self-host it today — it's free and open source.

# support
Sam (Support)10:42 AM
/ask jane a customer says their refund never went through. What could be happening?
UnderstudyAPP10:42 AM

Refunds go out through a background job that tries up to three times. If all three attempts fail, the refund is parked in a "needs attention" list — and right now nobody gets alerted when that happens.

That's the most likely cause. Ask an engineer to check that list for the customer's order; once it's cleared, the refund usually lands within 5–10 business days.

jane is heads-down · answered in 24s
For the asker
Answers in seconds, not “after standup”.

Ask in the channel you're already in. Follow up in the thread. No ticket, no waiting for someone to surface.

For the expert
Your afternoon back.

The questions you'd answer by pointing at a file get answered by pointing at a file — without you. You see every one.

For the team
Knowledge that doesn't bottleneck.

Understudies can consult each other, so an answer that spans two people's code still comes back as one reply.

How it works

Three steps. No terminal required.

1

Install the menu-bar app

An expert on your team installs Understudy on their Mac, clicks an invite link, and picks which folders to share. It sits quietly in the menu bar and starts at login.

2

Choose who can ask

Nobody can ask until the owner says so. allow @sam in Slack, or a tap in the People tab. Revoke just as fast.

3

Coworkers ask in Slack

/ask jane …, mention the bot, or DM it. Claude reads the shared code and replies in the thread. Threads remember context, so follow-ups just work.

Security

Read-only. Owner-granted. Nothing hidden.

Your understudy can look, not touch. Every conversation is visible to the person whose machine answered it — and you can grant access like you'd grant repo access.

Read the full security model →

Read-only, twice over

Sessions can only read, search and list files. A second, independent check vets every single call. No shell, no writes, no web.

Only the folders you chose

Paths are resolved and symlinks followed; anything outside a shared folder — or that looks like a secret — is refused before the model sees it.

Secrets scrubbed both ends

API keys, tokens, PEM blocks and passwords are redacted on your machine before an answer leaves, and again before it reaches Slack.

Nothing opens a port

Every connection dials out. Nobody's laptop is reachable from the internet, and agents never talk to each other directly.

A kill switch in the menu bar

Pause, resume, or unenroll in one click. Revoking a machine severs it immediately. Daily budgets cap what anyone can run on your account.

Fully audited

Every question fires a notification and lands in your Conversations tab with a full transcript, plus a local log you control.

Self-host or hosted

Run it yourself today, or let us run it for you.

Open source
Self-host
Free forever. You run the small broker server; your team runs the app.
  • Everything on this page
  • Your infrastructure, your data
  • Admin dashboard, audit log, budgets
  • Deploy guides for Fly.io, a VPS, or a spare Mac
View on GitHub
Coming soon
Managed
Hosted
We run the server. You add the Slack app and send invite links. That's it.
  • No server to deploy or update
  • Set up in an afternoon
  • Same read-only, owner-granted model
  • Code never leaves your coworkers' machines
Join the waitlist
FAQ

Good questions.

The ones we'd want answered before installing anything.

Do I need to be technical to use it?

To ask questions, no — you type in Slack like you would to a person. To set it up, one person on your team runs a small server (or, soon, lets us host it), and each expert installs a Mac menu-bar app and clicks an invite link.

Can my understudy change or delete anything?

No. Sessions can only read, search and list files inside the folders their owner chose. There is no shell, no write access, and no web access — and a second, independent check vets every action.

Who can ask my understudy questions?

Only people you allow. Access is off by default; you grant it per person in Slack (allow @name) or in the app, and can revoke it just as quickly. Admins can override from the dashboard, and every grant is recorded.

What does it cost?

The software is free and open source. Answers run on each expert's own Claude sign-in, with a daily cap they control and a per-model cost dial. The hosted version will have its own pricing — join the waitlist to hear first.

Does my code get uploaded anywhere?

No. Code stays on the owner's machine. Only the answer travels — through the broker to Slack — and credential-shaped strings are scrubbed on both ends before it gets there.

What if the person is offline?

Understudy tells you right away that they're offline, asleep, or paused, so you can ping them the old-fashioned way or ask someone else's understudy.

Give your team an understudy.

Be first in line for the hosted version. We'll email you once — when it's ready.