draftgate

draftgate holds a message your Claude Code agent is about to send to Jira, Slack, Linear or GitHub and shows it in a window, drawn the way that destination will draw it. You can edit it, then approve or reject it. Nothing is sent until you approve, and every edit you make is kept, so you can teach the agent to write the next draft the way you would. The window also says who will read the message when that is not obvious: a customer on a Jira service desk, or anyone at all on a public GitHub repository.

macOS 26 or newer only. You need Claude Code, Apple's Command Line Tools (xcode-select --install) and bun, which the install script adds if it is missing.

Install

In a terminal:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Jakuboola/draftgate/stable/install.sh | sh

Or, in Claude Code, /plugin marketplace add Jakuboola/draftgate and then /plugin install draftgate@draftgate. That way needs bun installed first (curl -fsSL https://bun.sh/install | bash). bun's installer may ask you to add ~/.bun/bin to your PATH; draftgate finds it there without that.

The script checks the Command Line Tools and Claude Code, installs bun if it is missing, and installs the plugin with Claude Code's own claude plugin commands. From then on, new sessions review every Jira, Slack, Linear and GitHub send tool draftgate knows. Then run /draftgate:setup in Claude Code to choose which of your tools it reviews.

To update, run the script again, or turn on auto-update for the draftgate marketplace in /plugin. Tools you added in /draftgate:setup stay reviewed after an update.

Commands

draftgate runs inside Claude Code, which puts it on the PATH of its Bash tool. Ask Claude Code to run it, for example "run draftgate doctor".

/draftgate:setup      choose which tools to review; run it again after adding a connector
draftgate help        the commands; draftgate <command> --help gives a command's options
draftgate doctor      check the install: hooks on, every send tool covered
draftgate digest      read the review log: outcomes, warnings, what reviewers edited
draftgate version     the installed version
draftgate uninstall   take draftgate's settings entry and files out (below)

Teach your agent from your edits

Each draft you edit is logged as the agent wrote it and as you sent it. draftgate digest lists those edits, newest first, and counts per destination how many drafts went out unedited. That is the record of what your agent keeps getting wrong.

To turn it into better drafts, paste this into Claude Code now and then:

Run draftgate digest --since-last --mark, read how I edited your drafts, and update your instructions so you write the next ones that way.

--since-last shows only the reviews since the previous --mark, so each round reads new edits once.

What it reviews

Calls to MCP tools. A message sent with curl or a script never reaches draftgate; docs/gating-your-own-sends.md shows how to make one reviewable.

These sessions run no hooks, so their messages go out unreviewed:

• started with --bare, --safe-mode, or a --settings file that turns hooks off;
• started with CLAUDE_CODE_SIMPLE or CLAUDE_CODE_SAFE_MODE set.

draftgate doctor checks your settings files, not a session's flags.

draftgate catches an agent's mistakes, not an agent working against you: anything running as your user can remove the hook or send around it.

What it keeps, and what it sends

The log. Each review is a line in ~/.draftgate/audit.jsonl, which draftgate creates readable by you only. Each line holds the full text of the message as drafted and as sent, where it was going, the outcome and your reason for a rejection. Rejected and timed-out drafts are logged too. draftgate digest summarises it. Lines older than 60 days are dropped whenever draftgate logs a review or you run draftgate digest or draftgate doctor; auditRetentionDays changes the 60, and 0 keeps everything. To turn the log off, set DRAFTGATE_AUDIT_LOG to an empty string in the env block of ~/.claude/settings.json.

The release check. At most once a day, after a review, draftgate runs git ls-remote against its GitHub repository. It sends no credentials and nothing about your messages. When a newer release exists, the next review says so and names the command that updates the plugin. "releaseCheck": false turns the check off; GitHub's Watch -> Custom -> Releases tells you instead.

The deadline. A review nobody answers within reviewSeconds (20 minutes by default) is denied like a rejection, and nothing is sent. The longest is an hour; a longer setting is held to it.

All three settings live in ~/.draftgate/config.json:

{ "version": 1, "reviewSeconds": 1800, "auditRetentionDays": 7, "releaseCheck": false }

Uninstall

In Claude Code, in this order:

1. Ask it to run draftgate uninstall. It takes the entry /draftgate:setup may have added out of your Claude Code settings, then asks before deleting ~/.draftgate: the log and your draftgate settings. It names what it leaves: a log you moved elsewhere and the settings.json.draftgate-backup-* copies of your Claude Code settings.
2. Run /plugin uninstall draftgate@draftgate, which removes the plugin, its hook and the draftgate command, then /plugin marketplace remove draftgate.

Development

A checkout needs bun 1.4.0 or newer, the first that reads its bun.lock.

git clone https://github.com/Jakuboola/draftgate && cd draftgate
bun install
bun test                 # opens no window
bun run typecheck
bun run surface:probe    # the window, rendered for real
bun run surface:e2e      # CLI -> window -> click -> payload
bun run surface:host     # the native host's guarantees
bun cli/src/main.ts review --dest jira --in docs/examples/jira-payload.json

A release is bun run release on main, at the version in plugin/.claude-plugin/plugin.json (bump it first): it builds the window, runs surface:probe and surface:e2e on it, tags main and commits the window and the plugin tree onto stable, the branch installs follow. bun run build:plugin assembles the same plugin tree locally, for claude --plugin-dir. Run the surface:* verifiers one at a time. .claude/CLAUDE.md holds the module map, the commands and the counts each run must print; it and .claude/rules/ hold the rules.

bun run --cwd tools/demo-video gif re-renders the demo above: the window from its own components, the terminal from a committed recording (run bun install --cwd tools/demo-video first). It uses Remotion: source-available, free for individuals, and a contributor at a company of four or more needs a Remotion licence to re-render.

Licence

MIT (LICENSE). docs/NOTICE credits third-party material, and the built window carries THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.