Auto-lock with Claude Code

Start a long Claude Code task, walk away, and a few minutes after Claude finishes your Mac warns you and then locks and sleeps itself. If you come back in time, one command cancels it.

It works by adding a Stop hook to Claude Code that runs the commandlatch command when Claude finishes responding.

What it does

The hook runs one command:

commandlatch done --notify --lock-sleep-after 5m

Which means:

1. A banner — “Locking in 5m” — appears on your Mac right away.
2. The Mac is scheduled to lock + sleep in 5 minutes.
3. If you’re still around, cancel it before it fires (see below).

The command returns instantly, so it never blocks your next prompt — the 5-minute grace period is held on the Mac, not in the terminal.

Setup

1. Install the commandlatch command

In the menu-bar app, open Settings → Command-line tool → Install commandlatch on PATH and approve the admin prompt. Then confirm it’s working:

commandlatch status

It should print your paired device. If it says No config…, finish pairing first. Full details: Install → command-line tool.

2. Add the Stop hook

Add this to ~/.claude/settings.json to enable it everywhere (or to a project’s .claude/settings.json to scope it to one repo):

{
  "hooks": {
    "Stop": [
      {
        "hooks": [
          {
            "type": "command",
            "command": "commandlatch done --notify --lock-sleep-after 5m"
          }
        ]
      }
    ]
  }
}

3. Try it

1. In a terminal, cd into any project and run claude.
2. Ask it to do something small — e.g. print the current directory.
3. When Claude finishes, a “Locking in 5m” banner appears on your paired Mac within a couple of seconds.
4. Either wait 5 minutes (the Mac locks and sleeps) or cancel it.

Cancelling

A pending lock can be cancelled any of these ways — they all do the same thing:

• Run commandlatch done --cancel in any terminal.
• Click Cancel Pending Action in the menu-bar menu (it shows the countdown).
• Click Cancel on the countdown pill in the dashboard.

Tweaking it

The command’s flags compose — adjust the hook to taste:

Command	Behaviour
commandlatch done	Lock + sleep immediately.
commandlatch done --notify	Banner, then lock now.
commandlatch done --lock-sleep-after 10m	Lock in 10 minutes (no banner).
commandlatch done --notify --lock-sleep-after 5m	Banner now, lock in 5m (the form above).

Want a 10-minute grace period? Change 5m to 10m. Durations accept s/m/h (e.g. 30s, 5m, 1h).

Good to know

Claude Code’s Stop hook fires every time the assistant finishes a turn, not only at session end. Each new lock simply replaces the previous pending one, so you always see a single, most-recent countdown.

If it doesn’t work

• No banner. Check the Mac is Online (commandlatch status / the dashboard) and that notifications are allowed — in the menu bar, Settings → Security checks → Turn on notifications. Do-Not-Disturb / Focus also silences banners.
• commandlatch: command not found in the hook log. Use the full path in settings.json: /usr/local/bin/commandlatch.
• Locks immediately instead of waiting. A glued-together flag like --lock-sleep-after5m (no space) is rejected. Use a space or =: --lock-sleep-after=5m.

More: the commandlatch CLI and Troubleshooting.

Beyond the Stop hook

The commandlatch run wrapper keeps your Mac awake during a long job and locks it after, propagating the job’s exit code:

commandlatch run --ttl 2h --lock-sleep-after 5m -- pnpm test:e2e

See the commandlatch CLI for awake, run, and the rest.

See also

• The commandlatch CLI — every flag the hook can use.
• Use the menu-bar app — cancel a pending lock on the Mac.
• Troubleshooting — when a hook-scheduled lock doesn’t fire.