A minimal, open-source tool that rings your phone when your AI assistant is done, stuck, or needs a decision.
- Freedom to Walk Away: Trigger a long task and leave your desk—Claude will ring your phone or smartwatch when it finishes or hits a roadblock.
- Real-Time Collaboration: Engage in natural, multi-turn voice conversations where Claude can use other tools, like web search, while on the line with you.
- Open Source & Low Cost: A free, MIT-licensed plugin that works on any device (even landlines) with API costs averaging just cents per minute.
In the rapidly evolving world of AI-assisted development, a new bottleneck has emerged: the “waiting game.” Developers often find themselves tethered to their terminals, watching progress bars or waiting for an LLM to generate code, afraid to step away lest the AI hallucinate or get stuck on a trivial error. Enter CallMe, a minimal plugin for Claude Code that promises to break this chain, allowing you to treat your AI agent less like a terminal process and more like a remote colleague who knows your phone number.
The “Call Me When You’re Done” Workflow
The premise of CallMe is refreshingly simple: Start a task, walk away. Instead of babysitting the command line, you can go make coffee, take a walk, or focus on deep work elsewhere. Your phone or smartwatch acts as a pager for your AI.
When Claude finishes the job, encounters an ambiguous error, or needs a strategic decision, it uses the plugin to place a real phone call to you. This isn’t just a text-to-speech notification; it is a multi-turn conversation. You can talk through decisions naturally, clarifying requirements or pivoting strategy using your voice. Because the tool is composable, Claude can even perform actions during the call—such as running a web search to check documentation—and report the findings back to you in real-time.
Minimalist Design, Maximum Compatibility
CallMe is built on a philosophy of doing one thing and doing it well. There are no crazy setups or bloated features; it simply connects Claude to the telephone network. This simplicity extends to hardware compatibility. Because it uses standard telephony, it works anywhere: your high-end smartphone, your wrist-worn smartwatch, or even an old-school landline.
For developers concerned with costs and licensing, CallMe is entirely Free & Open Source (MIT). You only pay for the underlying telephony API usage, which typically amounts to mere cents per minute of conversation—a small price to pay for the freedom to leave your desk.
Troubleshooting and Best Practices
While CallMe is designed for minimalism, integrating telephony with local development environments can occasionally require tweaking. If you are setting this up for the first time, here is a guide to ensuring a smooth connection.
If Claude isn’t using the tool: First, ensure that all required environment variables are correctly set, ideally within your ~/.claude/settings.json file. Remember that after installing any new plugin, you must restart Claude Code for the changes to take effect. If it still hesitates, try being explicit with your prompt: “Call me to discuss the next steps when you’re done.”
If the call doesn’t connect: Connectivity issues are often tied to the bridge between your local machine and the outside world. Check the MCP server logs using claude --debug to see if errors are being thrown to stderr. Verify that your phone provider credentials are correct and that ngrok is successfully creating a tunnel to your local machine.
If you experience audio issues: Silence on the line is usually a configuration mismatch. Ensure your phone number is verified with your provider (a common requirement for trial accounts). Additionally, double-check that the webhook URL in your provider’s dashboard matches your current ngrok URL exactly.
A New Way to Work
CallMe represents a shift in how we interact with autonomous agents. By moving the notification layer off the screen and into the real world, it grants developers the confidence to disconnect, knowing that if their digital partner needs them, they are just a phone call away.