Anthropic removed the /buddy companion from Claude Code and never shipped a replacement. A developer going by 1270011 has rebuilt the functionality from scratch as an open-source MCP application called Claude Buddy, now available on GitHub.
MCP (Model Context Protocol) is Anthropic's standard for connecting Claude to external tools and services - the same plugin architecture used by Claude for Desktop. Building /buddy as an MCP app rather than a native Claude Code feature means it runs independently of whatever Anthropic ships next. A future Claude Code update can't silently deprecate it.
The project is early-stage with minimal documentation. Getting it configured requires comfort with command-line tools, and the codebase is small enough to audit if you're cautious about running third-party code alongside your development environment.
For developers who built workflows around the original companion interface before Anthropic pulled it, this is currently the only option to get that experience back. It's a narrow use case, but a real one - and the MCP approach is a smarter foundation than the original implementation.