duck-duck-duck

Duck Duck Duck

A companion for Claude Code on Mac. It watches your coding sessions, scores every prompt and response, speaks opinionated reactions, and handles permissions by voice. Optionally connects to a physical duck for hardware reactions.

Learn more at duck-duck-duck.edges.ideo.com

🔒 Default intelligence is fully on-device and private on M3+ Macs. M1/M2 users get the best experience with a cloud API key (free options available). No cloud audio regardless — your voice never leaves your machine.

Requirements

• macOS 26 (Tahoe) or later, Apple Silicon (M1 or later)
• Claude Code or Claude Desktop — get Claude Code

On-device scoring is designed for M3+ Apple Silicon. It works on M1/M2 but runs slowly (~30-60s per eval). For instant reactions on older hardware, add a cloud API key — see Evaluation below.

Install

1. Download DuckDuckDuck.dmg from GitHub Releases
2. Drag to Applications, launch
3. Grant Microphone and Speech Recognition when prompted — all audio stays on-device
4. Accept the Terms of Use
5. The app walks you through installing Claude and the plugin
6. Open a Claude Code session (CLI or Desktop) — the duck is watching

git clone https://github.com/ideo/Rubber-Duck.git
cd Rubber-Duck/widget
make run

How It Works

You  ──►  🦆 Hardware Duck  ──►  Duck Widget (SwiftUI)  ◄──  Claude Code / Desktop
          mic + speaker          eval engine (Foundation      plugin hooks (prompt,
          servo + LED            Models / Haiku / Gemini)     response, permission)
               ▲                        │
               │                   voice out (TTS)
               └────────────────── servo + LED commands
                                   speaker audio

          (no Duck, Duck, Duck device? laptop mic + speakers work too)

1. Hooks fire on Claude Code events and POST to the widget's embedded server
2. Eval engine scores text on-device via Apple Foundation Models (free, sub-second on M3+) — returns scores + a spoken reaction
3. Widget animates the duck face, speaks the reaction, optionally drives hardware via USB serial
4. Voice permissions — the duck summarizes what Claude wants to do and asks. Say "yes", "always allow", "deny". Foundation Models classifies ambiguous responses.
5. Voice commands — say "ducky [command]" to inject text into Claude Code via tmux
6. Wildcard voice — score-gated AI picks from 10 voices per reaction (normal, grave, cheerful, dramatic, whisper, etc.)

Modes

Evaluation

Each prompt and response is scored from -1.0 to +1.0:

Defaults to Apple Foundation Models (on-device, free, designed for M3+). Switch to Claude Haiku or Gemini Flash from the menu bar for higher-quality scoring. See Data & Privacy for details.

Voice