claude-tycoon

claude-tycoon is Token Tycoon, an idle game in a pane that Claude’s work pays for. Every tool call Claude makes earns tokens, the game’s own currency, and those tokens buy generators that keep earning by themselves. The game never asks the model anything, so it spends none of your real tokens, and your progress is kept between sessions.

What it does

• Claude’s work pays. Each tool call earns according to its kind: reading, editing, shell, web, subagents, MCP tools. A failed call pays half and a denied one nothing. Calls less than 20 seconds apart build a streak that raises the pay, and the end of each turn pays a salary sized by the output tokens it used.
• Generators earn on their own. There are twelve, from a Prompt up to a Matrioshka Brain, and each one you buy costs 15% more than the last. They run for an hour after the last activity, up to a day with upgrades, and a tool call in any session restarts that clock. Come back after a break and a toast says what was made. Space, or a click on the scene, mines a little by hand.
• Long-term progress. Upgrades double a generator, raise what a kind of call pays, lift the streak cap or stretch the unattended hour. Each achievement adds 2% to all income for good. Shipping a model trades the run’s tokens, generators and upgrades for weights, each worth another permanent 5%, and moves your rank from Haiku up to Mythos.
• The balance under the prompt. The hint line shows it, with the upgrades you can afford and a ship that is due, so the pane can stay closed. In the fullscreen layout a click on it opens and closes the game. /tycoon hint hides it.

Install

Needs Claude Code 2.1.287 or later and a pane at least 36 columns wide and 10 rows tall.

claude plugin marketplace add barisdemirhan/claude-tycoon
claude plugin install tycoon@claude-tycoon

The plugin installs as tycoon. Restart Claude Code, run /tycoon, let Claude make a few calls and press 1 to buy your first Prompt. The pane takes the keyboard: digits buy, g u r p t switch tabs, Esc hands the keys back to the prompt and ctrl+x tab gives them back to the game. /tycoon stop closes the pane while the game keeps earning, /tycoon stats prints the balance in one line and /tycoon reset confirm deletes the save.

How it works

Of each tool call it reads two things: the tool’s name, to pay it by kind, and whether the call failed. It never sees the arguments or the output, and it passes every call and result on unchanged. Of each finished turn it reads one number, the output tokens used. It reads no files and runs no processes.

The save, the hint line setting and, once you join the leaderboard, your name, id and secret live in the plugin’s own Claude Code store on your machine. All your sessions share that one save.

It makes no network request unless you use the global top, a leaderboard on the author’s server at claude-tycoon-board.barisdemirhan.workers.dev:

• Opening the Top tab or running /tycoon top fetches a page of the board. Before you join, the request carries no id.
• Joining, with /tycoon name <name> or a name typed on the Top tab, sends that name plus a random id and secret made on your machine.
• After that your save uploads by itself: on joining, when you view the board, after a ship, and at the end of a turn no more than once every ten minutes. It holds the game state and counts of calls by kind of work, not the real token count, tool names or anything else from your session.

The server re-checks each save against the game’s rules and keeps your name, id, a hash of the secret, your best score and your latest save, plus a salted hash of the sending address that is cleared once it is an hour old. /tycoon leave deletes your entry, and /tycoon name off stops the Top tab asking. The author’s privacy policy has the full list.

Limitations

• The global top can check that a save adds up, but not that Claude really made the calls. The author presents it as fun, not as a fair contest.
• A leaderboard name is tied to a secret in this machine’s store. On another machine, or after the store is cleared, you need a new name.
• When an update changes a price or a rule, an older copy of the plugin stops uploading saves until you update it.
• The pixel screen draws in the terminal and the Desktop app. Other surfaces that draw panes get the same game as plain buttons and text.