Plugin

Bring Hamster into Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Antigravity, Copilot CLI, Grok Build, or Pi. Ask Hamster about your workspace, then ship a Brief without leaving your AI coding tool.

Overview

Hamster knows what your team is building and why. Your Briefs, Plans, Blueprints, and the decisions behind them stay connected in the Context Graph. The plugin gives your AI coding tool that context through its Ask and Ship skills. Ask Hamster what applies to your branch or why something was built, and it answers from your workspace. Ship a Brief, and your agent works through its Plan with the Blueprints and Methods your team shares.

The plugin connects your tool to Hamster's hosted MCP Server at https://tryhamster.com/mcp. Its setup skill installs the hamster CLI if it's missing, and the CLI keeps your Briefs, Plans, Blueprints, and Methods synced as markdown in the repository's .hamster/ folder, where Ship reads them.

Install

You need a Hamster account. To ship, you also need git and the GitHub CLI (gh).

Install the plugin in each AI coding tool you use. Open the tool in the repository you want to connect, then paste the prompt or follow your tool's steps.

Install Hamster in this repository. Fetch and follow https://tryhamster.com/plugin/install

Or install it yourself:

  1. Install the plugin:
    /plugin marketplace add gethamster/plugin
/plugin install hamster@hamster-plugins
  2. Run /reload-plugins (or restart), then /hamster:setup.
  3. Sign in to the MCP Server: open /mcp and select plugin:hamster:hamster.
  1. Customize → Add Marketplace → Import from GitHub.
  2. Paste this URL at User scope and select Import.
    https://github.com/gethamster/plugin
  3. Open the Personal tab and select Add next to Hamster.
  4. Run /setup.
  5. Sign in to the MCP Server: follow Cursor's sign-in prompt for Hamster.
Troubleshooting

On Cursor Enterprise, an admin must allow marketplace imports first.

This install also covers Grok Bot, which shares Cursor's plugin library, so skip /add-plugin there.

If Grok Bot shows "Complete GitHub auth to sync installed plugins", complete it.

  1. Install the plugin:
    codex plugin marketplace add gethamster/plugin
codex plugin add hamster@hamster-plugins
  2. Run $hamster:setup in Codex.
  3. Sign in to the MCP Server: run codex mcp login hamster in your terminal.
Troubleshooting

Ask using hamster chat instead of the MCP Server? Install with the commands above, then run codex mcp login hamster.

  1. Install the plugin:
    agy plugin install https://github.com/gethamster/plugin
  2. Run /hamster:setup in the CLI or /setup in the app.
  3. Sign in to the MCP Server:CLI: open /mcp, select hamster_hamster, then Authenticate.App: in Settings → Customizations → Installed MCP Servers, select Authenticate on hamster_hamster, approve Hamster, and paste the code.
Troubleshooting

No Authenticate button in the app? It needs Antigravity 2.15 or newer.

Don't also add a hamster entry to mcp_config.json: the plugin registers hamster_hamster itself, so every tool would load twice.

Updating? Uninstall first so renamed skills from an older version don't linger:

agy plugin uninstall hamster
agy plugin install https://github.com/gethamster/plugin
  1. Install the plugin:
    copilot plugin marketplace add gethamster/plugin
copilot plugin install hamster@hamster-plugins
  2. Run /hamster:setup.
  3. Sign in to the MCP Server: run /mcp auth hamster.
  1. Install the plugin:
    grok plugin install gethamster/plugin --trust
  2. Run /setup.
  3. Sign in to the MCP Server: open /mcps, select hamster under Plugin: hamster, and press i.
  1. Install the plugin:
    pi install git:github.com/gethamster/plugin
  2. Run /skill:setup. Pi has no MCP support, so Hamster runs through the CLI.

setup also signs the CLI in with hamster auth login: approve it with the same Hamster account, which is one click if you're signed in to Hamster in your browser. Run hamster status to confirm the CLI is signed in and synced.

Setup, Ask, and Ship

Each is a plugin skill, and each runs only when you ask for it:

  • Setup — setup installs the CLI if it's missing, signs it in with hamster auth login, connects this repository to your team with hamster init (which may ask you to pick a team), and runs the first sync.
  • Ask — ask-hamster sends your request to Hamster along with local context like the branch, diff, or error you're looking at, for example /hamster:ask-hamster Which decisions apply to this branch? in Claude Code.
  • Ship — ship works through the Tasks of a Brief's Plan, grouping Tasks that don't overlap into waves that run in parallel. It asks what to do with uncommitted changes before it starts, and again before any push or pull request.

Plugin Skills covers how to start each skill in your tool, what Ship accepts, and what Ask does when the MCP Server isn't available.

Without the Plugin

  • MCP Server only — Connect the MCP Server directly in a tool that doesn't load plugins. You get the MCP tools, including ask_hamster, but not the plugin skills or the synced .hamster/ files.
  • CLI only — To use the CLI in a terminal or CI pipeline without an AI coding tool, install it with curl -fsSL https://tryhamster.com/cli/install | bash, then run hamster auth login (or set HAMSTER_ACCESS_TOKEN in CI) and hamster init in the repository. You get sync, hamster chat, and the other CLI commands, but not the Ask or Ship skills. CLI Authentication has the full steps.
  • Cloud Agents — Hamster runs the Brief in the cloud and a pull request lands in your repository, with no engineer at the keyboard.