What Do You Do While Claude Code Thinks? I Built a T-Rex Game

[Mohan-Sharma]

The hardest part of AI-assisted coding isn't the code. It's the waiting.

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The Problem

You know the moment. You fire off a prompt. Claude Code starts thinking. And you enter the dead zone - too short to context-switch to another task, too long to just stare at a blinking cursor.

You check your phone. You refill your coffee. You open Twitter. You close Twitter. You open it again. Meanwhile, Claude finishes and you don't notice for three minutes.

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The Solution: Dino Run

I built a T-Rex runner game that lives inside your tmux session. Press ctrl+b and release and then press g, and a pixel-art dinosaur game takes over your terminal. Jump over cacti, dodge birds, watch the day turn to night.

When Claude Code finishes its task, a notification pulses across the game screen. Press Q to quit and get back to work. No alt-tabbing. No missed completions.

One curl command. Zero extra dependencies (beyond Python 3 and tmux).

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Install It

Prerequisites:

• macOS with Terminal or iTerm2
• Python 3
• tmux (the installer will brew install it if missing)

One command:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/CRACK-BREAK-MAKE/dinobot/main/install-dino.sh | bash

That's it. The installer:

1. Creates ~/.claude/games/ and drops the game there
2. Adds a tmux keybinding (ctrl+b release and press g) to your ~/.tmux.conf
3. Configures Claude Code hooks in ~/.claude/settings.json so the game knows when Claude is done

If you prefer to inspect before running:

git clone https://github.com/CRACK-BREAK-MAKE/dinobot.git
cd dinobot
cat install-dino.sh   # read it first
bash install-dino.sh

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How to Play

Start any tmux session (or use the one Claude Code already runs in), then:

Key Action

Ctrl+b then g	Launch the game
SPACE or UP	Jump
DOWN	Duck
P	Pause
Q	Quit and return to Claude

The game runs as a tmux popup overlay - it doesn't touch your main terminal session. Your Claude Code session keeps running underneath.

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What's Inside

This is not your average terminal game. The renderer uses Python's curses library with half-block pixel rendering for smooth visuals:

• Parallax mountains - dual-layer scrolling backgrounds that move at different speeds
• Day/night cycle - the sky shifts from day to night and back, with color theme changes
• Stars at night - animated stars appear when the sun goes down
• Particle effects - dust clouds kick up when the dino runs, and a death sequence plays when you hit something
• Milestone celebrations - every 100 points, you get a notification flash
• High score persistence - your best run is saved to ~/.claude/games/.highscore

All of this in a single Python file. No dependencies beyond the standard library.

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The Notification Trick

This is the part that makes it actually useful instead of just fun.

The installer adds two hooks to your Claude Code settings (~/.claude/settings.json) :

1. Stop hook - fires when Claude finishes a task
2. Notification hook - fires when Claude sends a notification

Both hooks do the same thing: create a signal file at ~/.claude/games/.claude_done.

The game checks for this file every frame. When it appears, a persistent alert pulses across the screen:

  +---------------------------------+
  |                                 |
  |    Claude has finished!         |
  |    Press q to return            |
  |                                 |
  +---------------------------------+

Press q, the game exits, the tmux popup closes, and you're right back where you left off. The signal file gets cleaned up automatically.

No polling. No browser tab. No notification you accidentally dismissed. Just a dinosaur telling you Claude is done.

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Uninstall

Changed your mind? Clean removal:

1. Delete the game files: rm -rf ~/.claude/games
2. Remove the keybinding line from ~/.tmux.conf ( the one with dino.py )
3. Remove the notification hooks from ~/.claude/settings.json

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Why

Is it necessary? No.
Does it make the wait enjoyable? Very much yes.
Will it improve your sprint velocity? Let's not ask that question.

Sometimes the best developer tools are the ones that make you smile while you wait for the real work to finish.

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GitHub: CRACK-BREAK-MAKE/dinobot

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Your turn: I built a dinosaur game. What's the craziest thing you'd build while waiting for Claude Code to finish? Drop it in the comments.