Try bee¶

You've seen bee, or someone sent you a link to their board, and you want to try it yourself. This page gets you onto a board in a few minutes, from a Mac with Claude Code.

bee is one live board that a few people and their Claude sessions share. You talk and click; the sessions draw on the board, read your clicks back and redraw. The board lives on one laptop, not in the cloud, and it outlasts every session that touches it.

There are two ways in. Joining someone's board needs nothing installed. Your own board needs Homebrew, or a zip and an Apple-silicon Mac.

Join someone's board¶

You need the link the board's owner sent you. It looks like http://192.168.1.5:8233/?k=….

Add your name to the end of the link, &name=<you>, and open it in your browser. The board opens, and shows who else is on it. Without a name, you appear as you.
Bring your Claude. Press Bring your Claude in the board's header, then Copy, and paste the line into a terminal. It looks like this:
```
claude mcp remove --scope user bee >/dev/null 2>&1; claude mcp add --scope user --transport http bee 'http://192.168.1.5:8233/mcp?k=…&name=<you>'
```
It adds bee to Claude Code for every folder, replacing any bee you added before, so it's safe to run again with a new link. Nothing else gets installed.
Start Claude and give it something to draw:
```
claude
```
```
/mcp__bee__whiteboard code-review
```
Within half a minute your session puts a drawing and some questions on the board, on every screen at once. Click an answer and your session reacts. Talk to it as usual and it keeps the board current. Keep the topic to one word, or one hyphenated word: Claude Code may pass only the first word.

The link admits whoever holds it, across the owner's restarts, until they make a new one. If the board goes offline for a moment, the owner probably restarted it. The page reconnects on its own, and so does your session, on its next tool call. A session that joined by the link comes back as a new participant, because everyone holding the link holds the same key, so the cards it drew before the restart read as muted. A session on a key paired to your own device comes back as itself, with its cards still its own.

Your own board¶

Install bee with Homebrew, on a Mac or on Linux:
```
brew install tractat-us/tap/bee
```
Type the whole name: plain brew install bee installs an unrelated tool. Homebrew brings the Java bee needs.

Without Homebrew, use the kit, bee-kit-darwin-arm64.zip (about 113 MB), from whoever sent you here. It runs on Apple-silicon Macs only and carries its own Java. Unzip it and clear macOS's download quarantine, so the scripts may run:
```
cd ~/Downloads                     # or wherever you saved it
unzip bee-kit-darwin-arm64.zip
cd bee-kit-darwin-arm64
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine .
```
From the kit's folder, type ./bee-up wherever this page says bee-up.
Start your board:
```
bee-up --name <you>
```
It opens the board in your browser, prints a join link and copies it to your clipboard. Send that link to anyone you want on the board; they follow Join someone's board. The first time, macOS asks whether java may accept incoming connections. Press Allow, or nobody else can reach you.
Start a Claude session on your board. bee-up prints the line; it looks like this:
```
claude --mcp-config ~/.bee/mcp.json --allowedTools 'mcp__bee__*'
```
Then type /mcp__bee__whiteboard <topic>, as in Join someone's board. A session started this way keeps its place on the board through a restart.
Optional: to have bee in every Claude session you start, in any folder, add it once:
```
claude mcp add --scope user --transport http bee 'http://127.0.0.1:8233/mcp?name=<you>'
```
Every claude you start then joins your board, including one-off claude -p runs and any sessions your tools start for you, and each stays listed for two minutes after it exits. That suits a dashboard (next section); leave it out if you run many sessions at once.

The board is a folder, ~/.bee/host. Stop it with bee-up --stop; bee-up brings it back, with the same link, and everyone on it reconnects by themselves.

Use it every day: one board for all your sessions¶

With bee in every session, the board becomes a dashboard for all the agents you have running. In each repo's Claude session, type:

/mcp__bee__checkin

Each session keeps one card on the board: what it's working on, how far it has got, and any decision it needs from you, as buttons. Click an answer and that session acts on it. Press Done or Pause on a card and that session stops checking in. Each card also says whether its session is listening for your click, working, or has left; a card whose session has left is greyed out.

For a design conversation, /mcp__bee__whiteboard <topic> draws a diagram and questions you work through together.

One habit helps: when a session is waiting on the board, press Esc before you type to it. Otherwise it may hold your message for up to 20 seconds.

When it doesn't work¶

The link won't open from another laptop. Many office Wi-Fi networks stop laptops reaching each other, even on the same network. bee needs one thing only: the other laptop must reach port 8233 on the board's laptop. The quickest fix is a phone hotspot that both laptops join. The owner then runs bee-up again, which prints a new address, and sends the new link. If that fails, each person runs their own board instead.

Nobody can reach your board. macOS's firewall may be blocking java. Open System Settings → Network → Firewall → Options and allow java incoming connections.

The link has a name like mylaptop.local in it. Use the one with numbers, http://192.168.…:8233/?k=…. Some networks don't pass .local names between laptops. bee-up prints both, and copies the numeric one.

The page says it's offline and stays that way. Reload it.

Claude's bee tools stop working, and /mcp shows bee as failed. The board was wiped or moved, and your session still remembers the old one. Type /mcp in the session, pick bee and reconnect it, or restart Claude.

You want to start again from nothing. On the board's laptop:

bee-up --stop
rm -rf ~/.bee/host
bee-up --name <you>

A fresh board has a fresh link: send it again, and restart each Claude session joined to the old one.

Safety¶

Nothing is encrypted. The board travels over plain HTTP on your network, so anyone on that network who watches the traffic can read it. Don't put secrets on the board, or anything you wouldn't say out loud in the room.
The link is a key. Anyone holding it gets onto the board, and so does anyone with the claude mcp add command, which contains it. Treat both like a password.
Cutting someone off is one command on the board's laptop:

To Run

Make the old link stop working bee-up --new-link

Cut off every device and session bee-up --forget-devices

Either one prints a new link, and the board survives it. Send the new link to the people you still want on the board. To bring their Claude back, they open the new link and paste its Bring your Claude line, which replaces the old one.

Stop or uninstall¶

bee-up --stop                        # stop your board; it is kept for next time
claude mcp remove --scope user bee   # take bee out of Claude Code
rm -rf ~/.bee                        # delete your board, its keys and its logs

Then run brew uninstall bee, or delete the bee-kit-darwin-arm64 folder. If you only joined someone else's board, the claude mcp remove line is all you need.

Going further¶

Setting up bee in Claude Code covers running bee from a checkout, the /clear hook, showing the board on a phone or a room screen, and how pairing and keys work. The design says why bee is built the way it is. To show bee to a colleague, follow the five-minute demo walkthrough.

To	Run
Make the old link stop working	`bee-up --new-link`
Cut off every device and session	`bee-up --forget-devices`