# 9 Insane Claude Mods I Already Can't live Without

Channel: Ben AI
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTqizdva04g
Duration: 14 min
Language: English
Words: 3184
Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/bTqizdva04g

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[0:00] Anthropic just launched mods for Claude Code, and I think it's one of the biggest updates they've shipped in a while. With mods, Claude can now build features for itself. Any feature you wish Claude had, you just describe it, and it builds it right into Claude Code. So, in this video, I'll explain what a

[0:15] mod is and how easy it is to build one. I'll show you the nine best mods to use after analyzing, building, and trying out more than 100 different ones over the last weeks, and I'll give away all of the mods for free so you can install them for yourself. Now, if you don't know me yet, I'm Ben. I'm a three-time founder, and I now run an AI agency and one of the largest AI communities for professionals and business owners, where I teach how to use AI to actually

[0:37] automate work or build an AI business. So, what is a mod? A mod is basically a plugin that changes how Claude Code looks and behaves, both in the desktop app or in the terminal. Now, you can essentially use or build mods that customize how the interface or harness itself looks or behaves, which is really powerful because it can drastically improve the way you work with AI. And it's really a reason to consider switching to the Claude Code tab if you're still used to working in Claude Code Work. The easiest way to explain a mod is by giving you an example of the first mod that I built, which already

[1:08] really improves the way I work with AI, the brain dump mod. Now, many people, including me, do a lot of long voice brain dumps when prompting Claude. But, these brain dumps often get messy. Voice transcriptions often contain errors. They jump around a lot. They're of course very unstructured. They sometimes even contradict themselves. So, I built a mod that automatically turns these messy brain dumps into a clear, structured prompt before Claude even processes it. And the way a mod works is very simple. Every time something happens in Claude Code, it sends out a signal. For example, when you send a prompt, when Claude is about to use a

[1:41] tool, when a sub agent starts, or when Claude finishes a reply. A mod just listens for one of those signals and can then do something when that signal fires. So, my brain dump mod listens for the moment I send a prompt. It then automatically checks if what I just sent is a long massive brain dump, and if it is, it blocks it so the prompt is held back before Claude gets it. And then in this case, it uses another AI model in the background to ask me a few clarifying questions about my brain dump, and then turns that into a clear prompt according to Anthropic's best

[2:13] practice prompting framework covering the task, the why, the guardrails, and what done looks like. Claude can then process that clear prompt instead of my messy brain dump. So that's really what a mod is. You make it listen for a signal, and it can then watch, change, or block what happens. And with those few building blocks, you can build almost any feature you want. And making mods yourself is really easy. You just describe what you want, and Claude builds it. In this case, I said something like, "Build me a mod that catches my long voice brain dumps, ask me a few clarifying questions, and then rewrite the prompt into my prompting

[2:44] framework." Claude then uses its built-in skill called plugin authoring to build the mod for you. If something doesn't work the way you want, you just tell Claude what to change, just like with a skill. Now finally, there are basically two types of mods, ones that use AI like this one, which uses your plan's usage just like a normal message, and ones that only track or show things

[3:04] on screen, which cost nothing to run. Now all of the mods that I'll show in this video will be in a zip file in the free resources in the first link in the description below, which you can just throw into a Claude chat and say, "Install these mods for me," and Claude will then add them to your own account. Now the second mod is one of my

[3:19] favorites, and it's called helper desk. In short, it shows you exactly what your sub agents are doing while Claude works. If you've been using newer models like Opus 5.5, you know they use a lot of sub agents. For example, every time I ask Claude to help me idea on a new video, it spins up a bunch of sub agents to do the research. Now this is generally good because Claude can analyze more things faster and keep the main chat clean, but the problem with this is there's no real way to see what each sub agent is doing, how much it's spending, or how far along it is. So you just sit there not knowing

[3:49] if it will take another 5, 10, or 15 minutes. So this mod fixes that in two ways. First, it'll give you a purple taskbar right above your prompt box that fills up every time a to-do gets ticked off, so you see how far along the whole job is and which step it's on right now. And second, you get a side panel where every sub-agent gets its own little Claude crab with its own color, its own progress bar, and what it's costing you, so you can see exactly which one is slowing things down and how they add up to the total cost of your chat. That is

[4:17] mod just watches every time Claude starts a sub-agent or ticks off a to-do and then changes what Claude code shows on screen by drawing the taskbar and the side panel. So, it doesn't use any AI to do that, so costs nothing to run. And because it's a mod, you can ask Claude to change how it looks, for example, to give each sub-agent a name that matches its role. Now, credit to Johnny Savy's progress mod for this one, which I used as inspiration, but I rebuilt this mod for my own workflow. Now, the next mod has made a real difference to my token spend and it's called cash clock. In

[4:46] short, it tells you exactly when an old chat is about to get expensive and can keep it cheap for you. Now, if you use Claude a lot, you probably have a few long chats you keep coming back to, for example, after lunch or the next morning. But what most people don't know is that coming back to an old chat can cost you far more than you think. And that's because of something called the cache. Every time you send a message, Claude rereads your entire chat. And to make that cheaper, Anthropic saves a copy of your chat on its own servers after every reply, which is called the

[5:14] cache or keeping your chat warm. And while the chat is warm, Claude just reads that saved copy for fraction of the normal price. On Opus 5.5, only a 20th of that normal price. But that saved copy only lives there for a limited amount of time. And once that timer runs out, the chat or cache goes cold, which means that saved copy is gone and Claude has to reread and save the whole chat again at full price. And on a long chat, that can make the same

[5:41] message up to 40 times more expensive. For example, on a long Opus 5.5 chat, that's about 4 cents warm versus $1.6 cold every single time you come back. And that timer is actually very short, 1 hour on a Claude subscription and only 5 minutes with an API key. And the problem is you have no idea when that timer actually runs out, so the cache clock mod listens for the moment Claude finishes its reply and then shows a countdown until your chat goes cold using the timer straight from Anthropic's own reply, so it's not a guess. And if you know you'll come back to the chat later, maybe after lunch,

[6:14] you just click keep warm or type /keep warm. Then right before the cache goes cold, it sends a small hidden message that keeps the entire chat warm, so the timer starts again. That costs only a few cents each time, which is of course far less than one cold restart. And it stops by itself when you send your next message or after 2 hours. Credits to Karan Binsal for this one whose cache tax mod inspired this one. Now, the next mod is one that I built myself and it works really well together with cache clock. It's called handoff and in short it moves your work to a fresh chat at

[6:46] the right moment without losing any context from your original chat. Now, if you work with Claude on bigger projects, you know chats can get really long and the longer a chat gets, the worse the answers get. That's because Claude can only hold so much in its short-term memory for a single chat, which is also called the context window. So, the fuller it gets, the harder it is for Claude to keep track of everything, so it starts missing details and mixing things up, which is also called context rot. Now, Claude tries to fix this of course by compacting the chat, which basically means it summarizes the older

[7:16] parts to free up space in the chat. But a summary always loses some details, so the answers still get worse over time. And if the cache has gone cold on top of that, every new message will cost you far more too. So, at some point you do want to start a fresh chat without losing all of the context and progress you've built up, of course. But it's

[7:34] hard to know when to actually do that. Now, this mod fixes both these problems and it can fire in three different moments. First, when your chat hits 250,000 tokens, which is sort of the cutoff point for Claude losing a little bit of its performance. Second, when the cache clock sees the cache go cold. And third, you can just type in {slash} handoff to trigger it. It then reads the whole chat, all the files Claude used or created in the chat, the skills, the tools, and the links it used, and then writes a well-structured handoff prompt for the new chat that's much more detailed than the short summary Claude

[8:07] makes when it compacts a chat. And you then get a simple button to start a fresh chat with that prompt, so the new chat knows exactly where you left off with all of the context, the progress, and the next steps. And because it's just a prompt, you can also use it to hand a task over to someone else on your team, so they can pick up exactly where you stopped. But before I show you the next one, very quickly, if you enjoy this type of content, you'll really enjoy my AI Accelerator, where you get access to my 30-day Claude course that takes you from beginner to pro in less

[8:35] than 1 hour a day, a full course on growing an AI business based on everything me and my team have learned over the last 3 years running an AI agency. You also get access to unlimited one-on-one live AI consulting with AI experts and a big library of skills, templates, and resources across all business departments. So, definitely check it out in the link in the description below. Now, the fifth mod is a really good way to make Claude actually remember your roles and preferences, and it's called Reflect. In short, it spots when you give Claude a role and asks you where you want to save that role. Now, if you use Claude code,

[9:05] you might know it has auto memory, so it saves some things it thinks are relevant in Claude's built-in memory, or if you have a Claude.md or an Agent.md or maybe a second brain, it can save it in there, too. Now, that's generally really good, but we don't really control what it saves and what it forgets. And often, it just doesn't save things or rules that actually would be great to have in your memory. So, this mod fixes that by listening to every prompt you send in every chat and checking if you just gave Claude a hard rule. For example, something like never use em dashes or

[9:36] keep LinkedIn hooks under 12 words. And if it spots one of those hard rules, you automatically get a pop-up asking if you want to save it to your built-in memory, your Claude MD, or your second brain if you work with one. And if you want your rules saved somewhere specific, for example, in a skill, you can just ask Claude to change the mod to however you want it to work. Now, credit to Byron on a course Claude reflect skill that inspired me to build this mod. Now, the next mod is the one that really helped me move from co-work to Claude code, and it's called chat inventory. Now, the

[10:05] reason I did many of my tasks in co-work instead of code until recently is because of its UI. If you've used co-work, you know it's a side panel where you see the to-do list, the connectors and skills Claude is using, and the files it's reading and creating. It's one of the things I like most about co-work because you always know what Claude is actually doing, and the Claude code tab just doesn't show you that. So, especially on longer tasks, it feels a little bit like a black box. So, this mod that I built listens for every tool call, connector call, and skill that Claude uses during a chat, and keeps

[10:36] track of them in a side panel called in this chat. So, just like in co-work, you see the to-do list with the goal at the top, every connector Claude is calling with its logo, and how many times it's called, the skills it's using, and the files it's reading and creating. For example, when Claude builds a client report from your CRM, your email, and your drive, you can see exactly where it pulled everything from. And because it only keeps track of what's happening and doesn't use any AI, it costs nothing to run. Now, the seventh mod is really useful for me, and it's called screen share mode. In short, it hides private

[11:07] information in your Claude code chats whenever someone else can see your screen. Now, think about how often your Claude chats can end up on someone else's screen. Maybe you share your screen in a team meeting, on a sales call, or during a training, or maybe you record videos for social media like me, or quick looms to show a teammate how you did something. And the moment you do, everything in that chat is out there, client names, email addresses, deal values, even your own personal details. And most of the time you only notice when it's already too late. So, when you turn this mod on by just typing

[11:37] {slash} screen share before you should share your screen, it changes what Claude Code shows on screen. So, every name, email, phone number, and dollar amount turns into a gray bar. Now, for me, of course, this one's perfect because I record a lot of my own chats for these videos, and before I had to make up fake client names, now I just turn on screen share mode and use my real chats. The next mod comes straight from Anthropic, and it's called replay theater. In short, it replays every edit Claude made to your file, so you can see exactly what changed. Now, if you do a lot of copywriting or design work with

[12:08] Claude, you know how many edits a single draft can go through. For example, you ask Claude to type in your newsletter draft, it makes a dozen changes in one go, and now you have no idea what it caught or rewrote. And until now, the only way to find find out was to compare the versions yourself or ask Claude to list every change. Now, this mod keeps track of every change Claude makes to your file. After Claude's reply, you just type {slash} replay, and it basically plays back all those changes one after the other, so you see exactly what Claude changed, and you can go back

[12:38] to an earlier version you like better. Now, keep in mind, it only works on files, so your draft needs to be a document Claude edits, not just text in a chat. Now, the last mod is another one that I built myself, and it becomes really important once you get into mods. It's called switchboard, and in short, it lets you see and switch off every mod you're running all in one place. Now, trust me, once you start, you'll end up building, installing, and testing a lot of mods, and the same thing will happen that happened with skills for many people. People installed hundreds of them and had no idea which ones were

[13:09] actually on their account, which ones they're using, etc. And right now, there's no quick way in the desktop app to see every mod that's running or to switch one off in the middle of a chat. So, this mod adds one simple command. When I type {slash} mods, it opens a switchboard with every mod that's running right now. I can turn each one on or off and hide the extra panels some mods add to my screen. So, if a mod gets in the way during a task, I just switch it off and every new mod I add shows up in this list by itself. So, I never lose

[13:37] track of what's running. Now again, you can download all of the mods for free in the first link in the description below. And if you want to get access to my full 30-day Claude course that takes you from beginner to pro in less than 1 hour a day, unlimited one-on-one AI consulting, a full AI business course, and a community with professionals and business owners actively using AI, you can check out my AI accelerator in the link in the description. As always, thank you so much for watching. And if you enjoyed this video, I highly appreciate a like and a subscribe. And if you want to learn more about Claude

[14:04] Code, you can check out the video here about

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