The laptop Companion

The Companion runs on engineers' laptops and stops secrets, dangerous commands and booby-trapped repositories before they cause damage.

What it is
Set it up
What it watches
How Claude Code sees it
What it never collects
Commands

What it is

Two small programs: averild, a background daemon, and averil, the command line tool that Git and Claude Code call as hooks. They work on macOS and Linux.

Early accessSigned installers, device enrollment and automatic updates are coming soon. Until then we give you a build and a configuration file during onboarding, and set it up with you.

Set it up

averild &                                   # or run it as a LaunchAgent / systemd user unit
averil claude-settings                      # paste into .claude/settings.json or managed settings
averil hooks install --repo ~/code/app      # pre-commit secret scan, chains any existing hook
averil status

The configuration file sets which repositories to watch (the company allowlist), whether checks block or only warn, and where to send events. With no configuration file, the Companion runs but checks nothing.

What it watches

Where	What it checks
Git pre-commit	Staged changes for secrets. A hit blocks the commit.
Claude Code hooks	Shell commands and file edits before they run: secrets, deletes outside the repository, force pushes to protected branches, commands against production, sending credentials to the network
Package manifests	Added or changed install scripts, and dependencies that skip the registry
New repositories	Files that run on their own when you open a folder: VS Code folder-open tasks, dev container commands, npm and composer scripts, suspicious `.envrc`

How Claude Code sees it

Verdict	What happens
Block	Claude Code is told no, with the reason.
Warn	You are asked to confirm, with the reason.
Allow	Nothing changes. Your own permission prompts still apply.
Daemon not answering	The action goes ahead and you see a warning. The Companion never blocks you by failing.

Commands are judged by their target. Production blocks, staging and unknown targets warn, and development is usually allowed.

What it never collects

Keystrokes, screen, microphone, camera or browsing data.
Anything from repositories that are not on your company allowlist. The new-repository check reads a few auto-run files, and its results stay on your machine.
File contents, commands or secrets. An uploaded event has only an event type, a salted repository hash, a relative path, a salted digest of the change and a risk tag.

Events wait in an encrypted local spool and upload over mutual TLS. It never follows symbolic links, never replaces an existing Git hook, and never says "allow" to Claude Code on your behalf.

Commands

Command	Does
`averil status`	Shows your Companion state. Add `--json` for JSON.
`averil ping`	Checks that the daemon answers.
`averil scan-repo <path>`	Runs the new-repository check on a folder now.
`averil pause --minutes 15`	Pauses checks, where company policy allows (by default up to 60 minutes).
`averil resume`	Resumes checks.
`averil claude-settings`	Prints the Claude Code hook settings.
`averil hooks install --repo <path>`	Installs the pre-commit scan. Add `--allow-shared-hooks-path` for a global hooks directory.
`averil hooks uninstall --repo <path>`	Removes the hook and restores any hook it chained.

Hooks for Cursor and Windows support are coming soon.

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Stuck? Email averil@averil.ai or ask me in Slack.