Allow customizing spinner "thinking" verbs — static list and dynamic sources

Open 💬 3 comments Opened Jul 3, 2026 by luiz-felipe-santana

What

Let users customize the randomized thinking verbs the spinner shows while Claude works (e.g. "Coreographing…", "Shenaniganing…", "Noodling…"). Today there is no way to influence them — spinnerTipsEnabled only controls tip text and prefersReducedMotion disables the animation entirely.

Why

The verbs are a beloved part of the CLI's personality. Letting users add their own — or pull team/project/seasonal-themed ones — makes it more fun and personal. A dynamic source also lets teams share a curated set, or rotate them without editing config.

Proposed

Support multiple source types via settings.json, with a mode to either append to or replace the built-in list:

  1. Static list — inline in settings:
{ "spinnerWords": { "mode": "append", "words": ["Vibing", "Percolating", "Conjuring"] } }
  1. Local file — path to a newline- or JSON-delimited word list, re-read on change:
{ "spinnerWords": { "mode": "replace", "file": "~/.claude/spinner-words.txt" } }
  1. Command — like statusLine, run a script whose stdout is the word list (enables server/API fetch, caching, per-repo logic):
{ "spinnerWords": { "mode": "append", "command": "curl -s https://example.com/spinner-words" } }

All sources fall back to the built-in defaults when unset, empty, or on error (so a failed fetch never leaves the spinner blank).

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