Agent Max

See what your Claude Code agents are actually doing, while they do it.

When a session delegates, the work disappears. You see "Agent launched successfully" and then nothing until it returns. Agent Max puts the whole tree on screen while it runs: every agent, what it is working on, how much context it is holding, and what it has spent.

Install

From VS Code: open the Extensions view, search Agent Max, click Install.

From the command line:

code --install-extension Davidarias01.agent-max

Opening it

Three ways, depending on where you want it. The watcher starts on first open, whichever you pick.

Start in the bottom panel. After installing, there is an Agents tab next to Terminal, Problems and Output. Nothing to run, it is just there.

Then send it to the right. In that panel's title bar there is a split icon. Click it and the exhibit opens as a normal editor tab in the column beside your code, where it can be split, moved or maximised like any other tab.

Or from the status bar. There is an Agents item at the bottom left from the moment you install. Click it to open the exhibit. During a run it turns into a live count, 2/8 agents, so you can see work happening without opening anything. agentMax.statusBar removes it.

The same thing is on the command palette as Agent Max: Open Beside Editor, and the panel itself can be moved with a right-click → Move Panel Right if you would rather keep it as a panel.

In a browser: Agent Max: Open in Browser, useful on a second monitor.

No default keyboard shortcut ships with the extension, deliberately, because a single combo would collide with whatever you already have bound. To add your own: Ctrl+K Ctrl+S, search Agent Max, click the + next to the command you want.

Requires Python 3.9 or later on your PATH. The watcher is a single standard-library script with no pip dependencies, bundled with the extension. It is found automatically (py -3 on Windows, then python3, then python); if yours lives somewhere unusual, set agentMax.pythonPath.

Features

The tree, to any depth

Agents that spawn their own agents nest under them. A run three levels deep looks three levels deep, and each card carries context against the window, turns, tool calls and output tokens.

What each agent is doing, right now

Agents appear the moment they are created, with the brief they were given.

Last said is the most recent line from that agent. Last action is the last tool call it made, with a timestamp. Between them you can tell a stuck agent from a slow one without opening anything.

Session totals, kept apart

Filter the agent list by session, depth, model, or down to agents that did real work, which is the fastest way to hide the ones that spawned and returned immediately.

Dialogue, log and trace

Open any agent and read it back. Everything it said with timestamps, every tool call in order, and the raw trace underneath. You can follow a number in the output back to the call that produced it.

Commands

Settings

agentMax.limit is worth knowing about. Agents past the cap are hidden without warning, so if a run fans out wider than you expected, raise it.

Privacy

Everything is local. The extension makes no network requests.

The watcher reads Claude Code's own transcript files under ~/.claude/projects/, which is where your sessions already live, and serves a page on 127.0.0.1. Nothing is uploaded, no API keys are read, no telemetry is collected, and no data leaves the machine. The port is bound to the loopback address only, so it is not reachable from your network.

The watcher is a single readable Python file: watcher/watch_agents.py.

Known behaviour

• If the port is already serving, the extension reuses it rather than starting a second watcher. Two processes on one port means the second binds nothing and exits quietly, which looks identical to the extension being broken.
• Closing the last VS Code window stops the watcher it started.

Contributing

Issues and pull requests welcome at github.com/davidalmeida90/agent-max.

To run from source: clone the repo, open it in VS Code, press F5 to launch an Extension Development Host. To build a .vsix, run npm run package.

Not affiliated with Anthropic

An independent tool that reads local Claude Code transcripts. Not built, endorsed or supported by Anthropic.

License

MIT © David Arias