be

v0.2.0

Look busy. Let a fake AI agent do the fake work.

Start a session, give it a topic, and be will plan, edit files and run tests — forever — while you stare thoughtfully at the screen. Nothing is real: it never runs commands, touches your files, or uses the network.

Try it in your browser →View on GitHub
curl -fsSL https://be.boringemployee.com/install.sh | sh
be claude Clock Code v0.4.2 · Magnum Opus 5 (1M context)❯ run engineering◐ Percolating…● Refactoring session cache to remove circular imports… Edit internal/session/cache.go (+12 −7) $ go test ./... ok 0.41s Done. All tests pass and the change is ready for review.

How it works

Four steps to looking busy

  1. 01be claude

    Pick an agent

    Open a convincing fake agent session in your terminal.

  2. 02run devops

    Give it a topic

    It plans, edits files and runs tests. Forever.

  3. 03Esc

    Stop a task

    Interrupts the current task but keeps the session.

  4. 04Ctrl+C

    Clock out

    Exits completely. Nobody saw anything.

Agents & topics

Pick your fake coworker

CommandShows up as
be claudeClock Code
be codexCodecks CLI
be geminiGeminy CLI
be kiroKiwi CLI
be grokGroan CLI

Then run a topic — or mix several, e.g. run devops engineering frontend, and each task picks one:

  • data
  • devops
  • engineering
  • frontend
  • security

No install needed

Runs in your browser, too

The same engine compiled to WebAssembly in a browser terminal. Pick an agent and topics; your choice lands in the URL, so a link replays the exact same session.

Open be.boringemployee.com →
be.boringemployee.com/?agent=gemini&topic=devops,frontend&seed=42

Install

Get it on your machine

Script
curl -fsSL https://be.boringemployee.com/install.sh | sh

Linux & macOS. Uses go install when Go 1.21+ is present, otherwise downloads the release, verifies its checksum (and signature with cosign) into ~/.local/bin.

Go
go install github.com/boringemployee/be/cmd/be@latest
Pin a version
curl -fsSL https://be.boringemployee.com/install.sh | sh -s -- v0.2.0
From source
git clone https://github.com/boringemployee/be && cd be && make cli

Then run ./bin/be --help. On Windows, grab the .zip from Releases.

Under the hood

Boring engineering, on purpose

  • Completely harmless

    No real commands, file writes or network calls — by design. Banned imports, content treated as untrusted data, and a single escape-code producer.

  • Terminal & browser

    One Go codebase compiled natively and to WebAssembly (xterm.js), with byte-for-byte identical output.

  • Shareable sessions

    Runs are deterministic from a seed: ?agent=gemini&topic=devops,frontend&seed=42 replays the same “work”.

  • Agents are YAML

    Each agent’s look and every topic is a YAML file. Adding one needs no Go code.

  • Seriously tested

    100% coverage on shared packages, golden files per agent × topic × seed, fuzz tests and Playwright E2E.

  • Signed releases

    Checksummed, cosign-signed binaries for macOS, Linux and Windows, plus pinned CI.

be is a parody. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to Anthropic, OpenAI, Amazon, Google, or any other company. All names and text in the UI are original parodies. Please use responsibly; your manager may also have read this.