californiaopensource/tellmphone — explained in plain English
Analysis updated 2026-05-18
Have Claude Code call Codex, Gemini, or Grok for a second opinion on your current project.
Assign a specific personality, like a grumpy reviewer or security auditor, to the assistant being called.
Keep a multi-turn conversation going between two AI assistants working on the same codebase.
Leave a message for another assistant session to pick up later, like a voicemail.
| californiaopensource/tellmphone | 0xallam/my-recipe | 0xhassaan/nn-from-scratch | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stars | 0 | — | 0 |
| Language | Python | Python | Python |
| Last pushed | — | 2022-11-22 | — |
| Maintenance | — | Dormant | — |
| Setup difficulty | moderate | moderate | moderate |
| Complexity | 3/5 | 2/5 | 4/5 |
| Audience | developer | general | developer |
Figures from each repo's GitHub metadata at analysis time.
Requires Python 3.11+, uv, macOS or Linux, and the CLI tools for the AI assistants you want connected already installed and logged in.
TeLLMphone is a tool that lets different AI coding assistants talk to each other on the same computer, instead of you manually copying answers between them. If you use one AI assistant like Claude Code but sometimes want a second opinion from another one like Codex, Gemini, or Grok, this project sets up a local switchboard so your first assistant can just call the second one directly, ask a question about your project, and relay the answer back to you. It runs as what is called an MCP server, a kind of local connector that plugs into the command line tools for these AI assistants. Once installed, it registers itself with whichever assistant CLIs are found on your machine. From then on, you can simply ask your assistant, in plain language, to call another assistant and get its opinion, optionally telling it to use a specific personality, like a strict reviewer or a skeptical devil's advocate. The called assistant runs its own turn in the background and its answer lands back with the assistant that made the call, and the conversation can continue with follow up messages. Under the hood there is no constantly running background service. Each assistant's copy of TeLLMphone talks over a simple local channel, and calls are handled by starting one background run of the other assistant's command line tool, then returning its answer once finished. Called assistants run in a safe, read only mode by default unless a project folder is specifically allowed to have changes written to it, and there is a limit on how many times assistants can call each other in a chain, to prevent them looping forever. The project ships with thirteen ready made personalities, such as a grumpy reviewer, a security auditor, and a rubber duck style thinking partner, and you can add your own as simple text files. All call records and conversation transcripts are stored as plain files on your own machine, which you can delete at any time. This requires macOS or Linux, Python, and the command line tools for whichever AI assistants you want connected, already installed and logged in. It is released under the Apache 2.0 license.
A local tool that lets AI coding assistants like Claude Code, Codex, Gemini, and Grok call each other for second opinions, without you copying messages between them.
Mainly Python. The stack also includes Python, MCP, uv.
You can use, modify, and distribute this freely, including for commercial purposes, as long as you keep the license notice and note any changes you make.
Setup difficulty is rated moderate, with roughly 30min to a first successful run.
Mainly developer.
This repo across BitVibe Labs
double-check against the repo, no cap.