Headless Claude Code

Headless Claude Code is a DevOps skill for Claude Code, published by vellum-ai in vellum-assistant.

1.1K stars160 forkson vellum-ai/vellum-assistantAdded 2026/08/20+1% in starsRepository updated 2026/08/20

agentagentic-aiai-assistantanthropicautonomous-agentsclaudeclaude-codeiosmacosmemoryopen-sourceopenaiopenclawproactive-aislacktelegram-botvellum-ai

Install in seconds

Install Headless Claude Code

Copy Headless Claude Code into your Claude Code skills folder. Run the command in your terminal, or review the source on GitHub before installing.

terminal

npx degit https://github.com/vellum-ai/vellum-assistant/tree/main/skills/headless-claude-code ~/.claude/skills/headless-claude-code

Requires Node.js. Downloads this skill only — not the rest of the repository — into your Claude Code skills folder.

Without Node.js

git clone https://github.com/vellum-ai/vellum-assistant.git

Clones the whole repository, then copy the skill’s own directory into your skills folder yourself.

In this catalog

Source file: skills/headless-claude-code/SKILL.md in vellum-ai/vellum-assistant
Installs to: ~/.claude/skills/headless-claude-code
Collection: One of 25 skills cataloged from this repository
Category: DevOps — 798 skills

What Headless Claude Code does

Headless Claude Code is a reference guide for running Claude Code in third-party headless, container, and CI environments. It covers auth strategies, interactive mode pitfalls, tmux orchestration, root user workarounds, and git auth without SSH agents or keychains.

Headless Claude Code is cataloged under DevOps on DirSkills. Headless Claude Code comes from a repository tagged agent, agentic-ai, ai-assistant, anthropic and autonomous-agents.

Documentation

README

Excerpt

Headless Claude Code

Running Claude Code outside a desktop terminal — in Docker containers, CI runners, cloud VMs, or orchestrated by another process — is full of undocumented friction. This guide covers everything we've learned getting CC to work reliably in these environments.

1. Authentication

CC tries multiple auth strategies in a fixed priority order. Understanding this chain is the key to headless auth.

Priority Order (highest → lowest)

This is the opening of the README. Read the full README on GitHub.

Commands Headless Claude Code provides

Slash commands named in this skill’s SKILL.md, listed in the order they first appear.

/login
/workspace
/data

Frequently asked about Headless Claude Code

What else does vellum-ai publish alongside Headless Claude Code?
Headless Claude Code is one of 25 skills that DirSkills catalogs from vellum-ai/vellum-assistant, the repository it ships in. Its siblings there include API Mapping, Amazon Shopping and Assistant Migration. Each one is a separate skill with its own page in this directory, installs the same way Headless Claude Code does, and is maintained by vellum-ai in that same repository. The rest of the collection is listed on the vellum-ai/vellum-assistant page.
How does Headless Claude Code compare to other DevOps skills?
Headless Claude Code ranks #409 by stars among the 798 DevOps skills in this catalog. The most-starred ones next to it are Backend Patterns, API Connector Builder and Migration. DirSkills ranks by the star count of the repository each skill ships in, so that order reflects how popular those repositories are rather than any review of Headless Claude Code against them. Open each page to compare what they document and how they install.