Claude Code iMessage Integration: Control a Programming Agent on Your Computer via iPhone Text Messages

According to 1M AI News monitoring, Anthropic's Claude Code team member Thariq Shihipar announced that iMessage is now live as a communication channel for Claude Code. After installing the plugin, Mac users can send messages to an active Claude Code session from their iPhone or any Apple device using iMessage, with Claude executing actions on the local machine and replying via iMessage.

The iMessage channel directly reads macOS's Messages database, sends replies via AppleScript, and does not rely on any external services or bot tokens. By default, it only responds to the user's own messages (self-chat mode), but users can add other contacts' phone numbers or Apple IDs using commands. The installation is done by running `/plugin install imessage@claude-plugins-official` in Claude Code, followed by starting a session with `claude --channels plugin:imessage@claude-plugins-official`.

iMessage is the third official channel for Claude Code's channels feature, following previous support for Telegram and Discord. Channels allow external platforms to push events to an ongoing local Claude Code session, where Claude performs tasks in the user's actual file environment and replies through the same channel, acting as a chat bridge from a mobile device to a local development environment. This feature is currently in a research preview stage, requiring Claude Code v2.1.80 or higher. Team and Enterprise users need to manually enable it through an administrator.