Common questions.
Honest answers.

Claude forgets. Crumb remembers. And Crumb gets it done. It's a native macOS app that organizes your Claude Code sessions, tracks context level, and distills every decision, every dead end, every rule you set into one on-device brain. Day 40 starts knowing everything from days 1 through 39.

You don't need to know how to code. Crumb is built for the creative. The person with the idea, who was never handed a computer science degree. It onboards you. It teaches you to think in systems and architecture instead of duct-taping prompts together and hoping. You describe what you want in plain English. You stop guessing. You start building.

You've been leaving a trail of crumbs this whole time. Half ideas, dead sessions, scattered context, almost-features. Crumb picks them up and makes something of them.

Crumb remembers. Crumb gets it done. Pick up your crumbs. Build the thing.

No. Crumb Tutor is a built-in coach that watches your session as it happens and hands you short, lesson-style tips right where you're working. Not a help widget you have to go find and ask a question. Crumb teaches you as you work.

On the one-time plan, Tutor is free for your first month, then $5/mo if you keep it, cancel anytime in Settings. On the monthly plan, Tutor is bundled into the $9.99/mo price. Cancel it in Settings and you drop to $4.99/mo for the app alone.

Starters is a gallery of 100 project prompts, everything from a logo to a full app, that you pick from at New Project. Each one is built to ask you the right questions first, so there's no wrong assumptions baked in before Claude ever starts. Once you answer, Crumb pre-briefs Claude and seeds a plan so you're not staring at a blank prompt box.

Starters is included on every plan, free tier included.

Scrooge mode is a top-right toggle, off by default, that refuses to overpay for work a cheaper model can already do. It routes each part of your session to the cheapest model that's actually capable of it: chores go to fast, cheap helpers, judgment calls go to a mid-tier model, and the hard stuff still goes to the frontier expert. Independent checking runs behind the scenes so quality holds even when the work got routed down.

It's routing, not magic, and results vary by project. Typical savings run around 70%, with a realistic range of roughly 60-85% depending on what you're building. On a subscription, that can stretch the same usage limits across 3-5x the work. Scrooge mode is included on both paid plans (monthly and one-time) and during any trial period. It's a Nerd mode feature, so it isn't part of the permanent one-project free tier.

Claude Code is excellent. Every AI tool hands you a blank terminal and wishes you luck. That's where the spiral starts. Twelve half-built features deep, the AI forgot what you decided this morning, and you're vibe-coding in circles with nothing to show for it.

Crumb pulls you out. You get all of Claude Code's capability in a normal Mac window. A live context gauge so sessions don't spiral. The Ledger so Day 40 starts knowing everything from days 1 through 39. Quick Prompts in arm's reach. The terminal is still there at the bottom if you need it. You just don't have to live in it.

Cursor and Windsurf are AI-augmented code editors. They live inside the IDE and give developers autocomplete, inline suggestions, and code chat while writing. They're good at that. Crumb is not an editor.

Crumb organizes Claude Code sessions. Long-running autonomous builds, context history, the Ledger, and Nerd mode configuration. If Cursor is the workbench, Crumb is the studio that keeps the workbench organized. A lot of developers use both for different jobs.

Crumb uses your existing Claude subscription or API key. Claude Pro or Claude Max from Anthropic works. If you don't have one, sign up at anthropic.com before or after installing Crumb.

Crumb is a separate purchase from your Claude subscription. You pay once for the app. Anthropic bills you separately for Claude usage. The two are independent.

No. Most people use Creative mode and that's it. Creative is for building things in plain English. Nerd is for the people who want to tinker with how things get built.

If you're not sure which one you are, you're Creative. Nerd mode is fully there if you ever want it. Both unlock in every plan. You don't pay extra.

The Ledger is a per-project record of everything you've built. Each session adds a crumb: what was done, when, how long it ran, how much context was used. It's shown as a bar chart, one bar per day, so you can see your full project history at a glance.

The Ledger lives on your machine. It's generated locally and never sent anywhere. You don't have to log into anything to see it. Close Crumb for two weeks and come back. The trail is still there.

Yes, both are Nerd mode features. MCP (Model Context Protocol) is a structured way to give Claude access to specific tools and data sources. Hooks are event-driven scripts that run before or after Claude Code actions.

If that sentence didn't make sense, you don't need Nerd mode yet. Creative mode handles everything most builders need. MCP and hooks are there when a project gets more complex and you want more control over what Claude can see and do.

Yes. One license activates on up to 3 Macs. If you replace a machine, deactivate the old one from Settings inside the Crumb app, then activate on the new one. The 3-activation limit is per license, not per calendar year.

Crumb works offline. The Ledger, project list, and session history are local and available without any network connection. The only thing that requires internet is starting a Claude Code session, because that calls Anthropic's API.

So: your data is always there. Your history is always accessible. You just can't start a new Claude session without a network connection.

The Quiet Pledge is Crumb's one-page data commitment. The complete list of every outbound connection the app makes. It runs on one rule: what you do here stays here.

Crumb doesn't read your code, doesn't send your project files anywhere, doesn't run analytics or telemetry. Your Ledger entries stay on your machine. Your prompts go to Anthropic the same way they always have. Crumb never touches them.

Your project files are on your machine in the folders you opened. They don't live in Crumb. If you stop using Crumb tomorrow, your code is exactly where it was before you installed it.

Crumb's data (the Ledger, session records) is stored in a standard location on your machine. You can read it, back it up, or delete it. Nothing is held on a server. Nothing is held hostage.

$39.99 one-time (Tutor free the first month, then $5/mo) or $9.99/month (drops to $4.99 after you turn off the Tutor). Both unlock the same features. The price you pay today is the price for this major version. When a major new version ships, one-time buyers get a discounted upgrade rather than paying full price again. Monthly subscribers stay at the same rate.

Crumb is not VC-funded. The pricing is designed to stay sustainable without being predatory.

macOS 13 (Ventura) or later. Crumb currently ships native for Apple Silicon (M series) Macs. An Intel build is planned. The app is a ~5 MB download and signed by Apple Developer ID.

Yes. The free version of Crumb gives you one project in Creative mode, full access, forever. Nerd mode is visible inside the app so you can see what's there, but you can't start projects in it or use its features until you upgrade. No card to install. No card to use the free version. No sales call. No conversion guilt trip.

Crumb is built for individuals. There are no team features, no seats, no collaboration layers. Just you and your projects, organized.

The people who get the most out of it run a lot of long sessions and need to track what's been done. If that's you, it's worth it. If you only use Claude Code occasionally for one-off tasks, the terminal is probably fine.

Crumb sends native macOS notifications when a long task finishes ("your bake is done") and when Claude explicitly prompts for input ("Claude needs you"). Both are local-only. Nothing leaves your Mac. No push notification service, no server round-trip.

You grant notification permission in the first-run wizard. You can change it any time in System Settings.

The live meters read the same data the Claude Code /usage command shows, via your existing login. This is the same number you'd see on your Claude account. Crumb refreshes it approximately every 60 seconds.

This is not an official Anthropic integration, and the number is not your bill. When a live read is unavailable, Crumb falls back to a local estimate and labels it clearly. You'll always know whether you're looking at a live number or a local estimate.

The Counter (Cmd+Shift+B) is a dedicated board for managing parallel sessions. It shows every active session as Working, Needs you, or Resting, with a context gauge and current branch per session. It's designed for when you're running more than one Claude session at the same time.

The project sidebar shows all your projects. The Counter shows the live status of your running sessions. They're complementary, not the same thing.

Diff Review is "What changed." It shows every uncommitted change in your project with per-file diffs so you can see exactly what Claude touched before you commit anything. You can restore individual files from the same screen.

You don't need to know git to understand what you're looking at. Crumb presents it as a plain list: file name, lines added, lines removed, with a color-coded view of each change.

No. The MCP server manager is a Nerd mode feature for people who already know what MCP is. MCP (Model Context Protocol) lets Claude access specific external tools and data sources. Normally you'd configure this by hand-editing a JSON file. Crumb's MCP manager does it through a UI instead.

If you don't know what MCP is, you don't need this. Creative mode handles everything most builders need without touching any of it.

Ship It is a Nerd mode feature. It runs the full commit flow: commit your changes, push to a feature branch, draft a pull request, run live checks. The hard guard is baked in: Ship It never pushes directly to main. It always targets a feature branch so a human reviews before anything merges.

If you don't have a git repo set up, Ship It won't be available. It's for people who already have version control in place and want to streamline the last-mile shipping step.

v0.5.0 is Apple Silicon only (M series). Crumb ships as a native arm64 binary. An Intel build is planned but not yet available. macOS 13 (Ventura) or later is required either way.

The app is a ~5 MB download, signed with an Apple Developer ID and notarized by Apple. It opens with a normal double-click, no security workarounds needed.