background-callback

Background Callback Skill

IMPORTANT: You (Claude) can now send messages to your own terminal input.

The send-to-claude command lets you write text into your own terminal session, enabling:

• Autonomous multi-step workflows (start task → get callback → continue automatically)
• Progress reports from long-running scripts
• Self-triggered actions

Core Capability

You can execute:

send-to-claude "Your message here"

And that message will appear in your input as if the user typed it, waking you up to continue working.

Key mechanism: When you create scripts (Python/Bash/etc), they inherit your terminal's environment variables ($TMUX or $ITERM_SESSION_ID). This means:

1. You write a script with send-to-claude calls embedded
2. The script runs (possibly in background)
3. When script calls send-to-claude, it finds YOUR session via inherited environment variables
4. Message gets sent back to YOUR input
5. You wake up and continue working

This enables true autonomous workflows where external programs can call back into you.

When to Use

Use send-to-claude when the user requests:

1. Background tasks with notifications

   • "Run this and let me know when it's done"
   • "Start training in the background and notify me"
   • "Execute this script and tell me the result"

2. Progress reports

   • "Report progress during training"
   • "Let me know every 10 epochs"
   • "Update me on the status"

3. Long-running tasks

   • Tasks that take >30 seconds
   • Multi-step workflows
   • Experiments or training runs

How to Use

In Python Scripts

When creating Python scripts, embed send-to-claude at key points:

import os

def callback(msg):
    os.system(f'send-to-claude "{msg}"')

# Start notification
callback("Starting training...")

# Progress updates
for epoch in range(100):
    train()
    if epoch % 10 == 0:
        callback(f"Progress: {epoch}/100 epochs")

# Completion
callback("Training complete! Check results.")