claudish-to-english

claudish-to-english is an open-source Claude Code plugin created by Mike Gvozdev (gvzdv on GitHub) that intercepts assistant messages and displays a plain-English rewrite alongside or in place of the original. It is display-only by design — Claude's own reasoning and the saved transcript keep the original text unchanged. The project is licensed under MIT and described by its author as a "working prototype" with 1,192 stars on GitHub as of mid-August 2026.

What It Is

claudish-to-english is a Claude Code plugin that hooks into the MessageDisplay event to rewrite verbose, jargon-heavy assistant output ("Claudish") into plain English. It uses a configurable LLM backend — defaulting to a local ollama model so nothing leaves your machine — and supports the Anthropic API and any OpenAI-compatible endpoint as alternatives. An optional second hook (rewrite-md.sh) can also rewrite Markdown files on disk when they are written or edited, though this is opt-in and off by default.

How the Hooks Work

The plugin registers two hooks in hooks/hooks.json:

• Display hook (rewrite.sh): Fires on every MessageDisplay event. Because Claude Code fires this once per streamed chunk, the hook buffers each delta to a temp file and only calls the LLM on the final chunk, once the full message is assembled. It also reads the original user question from the transcript and passes it as context so the rewrite stays on-topic.
• Markdown hook (rewrite-md.sh): A PostToolUse hook that rewrites *.md files in a user-specified directory. It supports a non-destructive sibling mode (writes NAME.plain.md next to the original) and an overwrite mode that replaces the file in place with an idempotency marker.

Both hooks are fail-open: if the provider is down, times out, or a key is missing, the original text is shown unchanged.

Display Modes and Configuration

The plugin is controlled entirely through CLAUDISH_* environment variables set in Claude Code's settings.json env block:

• CLAUDISH_MODE: append (default, safest — appends a 💬 In plain English: block after the original) or replace (experimental — suppresses streaming and shows only the rewrite).
• CLAUDISH_PROVIDER: ollama (default, local), anthropic, or openai.
• CLAUDISH_MODEL: Overrides the provider's default model. The default gemma4:26b-mlx is Apple-silicon (MLX) only; Windows users must set a non-MLX tag.
• CLAUDISH_MD_DIR: Opt-in directory for the Markdown hook; unset means the hook does nothing.
• A runtime kill switch (touch ~/.claude/claudish-off) pauses rewrites mid-session without restarting Claude Code.

Custom rewrite prompts can be supplied via CLAUDISH_PROMPT_FILE and CLAUDISH_MD_PROMPT_FILE, replacing the built-in system prompt entirely.

Provider Architecture and Privacy

With the default ollama provider, all rewriting happens locally and no conversation content leaves the machine. Switching to anthropic or openai deliberately sends each assistant message (and, with the Markdown hook, file contents) to an external API. The README includes an explicit caution that ambient OPENAI_API_KEY or ANTHROPIC_API_KEY environment variables are picked up automatically, so setting CLAUDISH_PROVIDER=openai is the consent switch. Dedicated per-plugin keys (CLAUDISH_ANTHROPIC_KEY, CLAUDISH_OPENAI_KEY) are supported to isolate usage from other tools.

Platform Support and Setup

The hooks are bash scripts. On macOS, requirements are ollama, a pulled model, jq, and curl. On Windows, Claude Code runs the hooks through Git Bash, and users must override the default model to a non-MLX tag. The plugin can be installed directly from the repository via /plugin marketplace add gvzdv/claudish-to-english and /plugin install claudish-to-english@gvzdv-plugins, or loaded for a single session with claude --plugin-dir.

Current Status

The repository was created on August 10, 2026 and last pushed on August 13, 2026, with 1,192 stars and 78 forks. The author describes it as a "working prototype." A CHANGELOG.md is included in the repository layout. The latest GitHub release is tagged assets (README assets, published August 11, 2026), indicating the project is in early active development.