Intermission is a Claude Code plugin that drops you into a Doom deathmatch while the agent is working
Intermission is a MIT-licensed Claude Code plugin by Jarrod Watts that drops the user into a shared Doom deathmatch two seconds after the agent starts a task and hands them back the moment the agent finishes or needs permission.
Image: GitHub
Why it mattersAn unattended agent run that lasts minutes is dead time for the person who kicked it off, so a plugin that fills the wait with a shared game and hands control back the moment the agent asks for permission turns a scrolling log into a usable break without missing the next prompt.
A long Claude Code task leaves the person who asked for it watching a transcript scroll with nothing to do until the agent stops or asks a question. Intermission, a Claude Code plugin released on 2 October 2026 by GitHub user Jarrod Watts, opens a pane beside the transcript two seconds after the agent begins and drops the user into a shared Doom deathmatch for as long as the agent is still running. The repository had 95 stars three days after launch, 8 forks, and is MIT-licensed.
The plugin installs with one command from Claude Code's plugin marketplace, and the first run downloads about 20 MB of game data. When the agent finishes, a three-second countdown returns the user to the transcript. If the agent needs an answer, for example a permission prompt, control returns at once, and the game resumes after the user replies.
What the plugin is actually running
The game is Odamex, an open-source Doom source port, with Freedoom's maps. Freedoom is a free, drop-in replacement for the original Doom data, under a BSD-3-Clause licence. Watts has forked the Odamex engine so that it renders without a window: each frame is written to shared memory, which the terminal then paints into the Claude Code pane, and the pane sends keys and clicks back. Monsters are left in the maps so the server never feels empty when the player is alone.
The connection runs over UDP to an intermission server at a fixed IP, under a random name such as QueuedMarine42. The README states that nothing about the Claude Code session, the project or the agent's work is sent to the server, and that between rounds the plugin stays connected as a silent spectator before disconnecting after five minutes of inactivity.
Requirements and limits
Three things have to line up before the pane opens. Claude Code must be on version 2.1.287 or newer, which is Anthropic's recent plugin API; the machine has to be a Mac on macOS 15 or newer, on either Apple silicon or Intel; and the terminal has to be one that paints game pixels, which the README names as Ghostty or kitty. If the terminal is too narrow for the pane to open on its own, the plugin offers it as a prompt the user accepts with one key.
The code changes to Odamex are shipped as a patch file in the repository, applied against a specific upstream commit, so a reader can see what was altered. The plugin is MIT, the engine patch and Odamex itself are GPL-2.0, and the Freedoom assets are BSD-3-Clause, each listed in the project's licence file.
Intermission is a small plugin against a brand new API from Anthropic. The reach is narrower than its star count suggests, because the Mac and terminal constraints exclude most Claude Code users on Windows and on Linux today. For a Mac user on Ghostty or kitty who runs long unattended tasks, the plugin is a one-command install from the marketplace, and the three-second return window is a stated promise rather than a long tail.
Source
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