Argus

Mission control for Claude Code in VS Code. See every Claude Code session at a glance, and know which ones are waiting on you.

• Sessions board: every session sorted into Needs you, Working, Idle, PR open and Archived, updating live as Claude works.
• Notifications: when a session needs permission, asks a question or finishes, with a button straight to it.
• PRs and worktrees: each card shows the PRs and git worktrees the session made, and archives itself once its PRs are merged.
• Diff review: review a worktree's or PR's changes, comment on lines, and send the comments back to the session.
• Plan usage: your Claude plan usage in the status bar.
• Plugins: add your own Control Center tabs, card chips and archive steps through a plugin API.

Getting started

1. Install Argus, and make sure you have the requirements, in particular Node.js 24 or newer.
2. Run Argus: Set Up Session Tracking from the command palette (or click the link in the empty Sessions view). This installs the Claude Code hooks Argus needs; no sessions appear without it.
3. Start or resume a Claude Code session. It appears in the Argus sidebar after its first prompt. Sessions that were already open show up once they next fire a hook.

Features

Sessions board

A sidebar view (the Argus icon in the activity bar) groups your Claude Code sessions into Needs you, Working, Idle, PR open and Archived. Cards move on their own as session state changes.

• A session stopped mid-turn (Esc, a crash or a closed tab) shows as interrupted in Needs you, so you know to resume it.
• The activity bar badge counts sessions that need you. A status bar item shows how many there are and the longest wait; click it to jump to one.
• Open a session's tab from its card. Argus asks the Claude Code extension to reveal the existing tab or resume the session.
• Each VS Code window shows only its own sessions: those started in the window's workspace folders, or in any checkout or worktree of the same git repo. Set argus.sessions.scope to all to see every session in every window. A window with no folder open shows everything.
• A card's title is the session's first prompt. Double-click the title (or use Rename Chat) to rename it in Argus. Claude Code's /rename also works, and changes the name in /resume and for other sessions too.
• Cards show open PRs. A + 2 merged · 1 closed chip shows the merged and closed ones too; click it again to hide them.
• Keyboard: / to search, j/k to move, Enter to open, e to archive, n for a new chat.

Archiving. A session archives itself when every PR it created is merged or closed, or when it closes without making a PR. You can also archive by hand. When the session has worktrees, archiving offers to remove them, shows how many uncommitted files each one has, and offers a force removal that deletes those files. Installed plugins can add their own cleanup steps; you are asked first. Sending a new prompt to an archived session brings it back.

Notifications. A warning when a session needs permission or asks a question, and an info message when it finishes. The Open Session button jumps straight to the session. Set argus.notifications to input (permission and questions only) or off.

Control Center

Run Argus: Open Control Center for the full-size view. It holds the Sessions tab, plus a tab for each installed plugin. On top of the sidebar, the Sessions tab has:

• Columns side by side. Press g (or click by repo) to split them into one row per repo, with repos that need you first.
• Token use on each card: ctx is the size of the latest prompt (how full the context is), used is new input, cache writes and output summed over the session and its sub-agents, plus how many times it was compacted.
• Search through every prompt and reply in each session's transcript, archived sessions included, with the matching text shown on the card. It starts at three characters.
• The sub-agents running in each session, by type.

Diff review

Review a worktree's changes against its base branch and send line comments back to the session.

• A card with a worktree gets a ± <worktree> chip; a card with an open PR gets ± #<number>. Click either to open the diff in an editor tab. Argus: Review Worktree Diff picks any linked worktree or workspace folder.
• Scopes: All (merge base to working tree, plus untracked files), Committed, Staged and Unstaged. The PR # or URL field opens any PR through gh pr diff, without checking it out.
• Click a line number to comment, and shift-click to extend the range. Send to agent copies the review as markdown and opens the session for you to paste it in.

Claude plan usage

A status bar item showing your Claude plan usage as a percentage (amber at 75%, red at 90%). It is on by default; turn it off with argus.usage.enabled.

It reads the sign-in that Claude Code stores locally (~/.claude/.credentials.json, or the macOS keychain) and sends it only to Anthropic's undocumented usage endpoint (https://api.anthropic.com/api/oauth/usage). The token is not stored, cached or logged. Usage refreshes every argus.usage.refreshMinutes minutes (default 5). Check Anthropic's terms on using your Claude subscription sign-in with third-party tools.

Plugins

A plugin adds a tab to the Control Center, chips to session cards, or extra steps when a session is archived. Plugins are folders in ~/.claude/argus/plugins that Argus loads on startup; nothing is installed into VS Code.

Installing one

Put the plugin's folder in the plugins folder and build it. For a plugin in a git repo:

macOS and Linux:

mkdir -p ~/.claude/argus/plugins && cd ~/.claude/argus/plugins
git clone <plugin repo url> my-plugin
cd my-plugin && npm install && npm run build

Windows (PowerShell):

New-Item -ItemType Directory -Force "$HOME\.claude\argus\plugins" | Out-Null
Set-Location "$HOME\.claude\argus\plugins"
git clone <plugin repo url> my-plugin
Set-Location my-plugin; npm install; npm run build

Then run Argus: Reload Plugins. Argus asks once per folder before loading a plugin for the first time, because a plugin runs with the same access to your machine that Argus has.

To update a plugin, run git pull, npm install and npm run build in its folder, then Argus: Reload Plugins.

Configuring one

Plugin settings live under one key, keyed by plugin id, and work at user or workspace level:

"argus.plugins.config": {
  "my-plugin": { "someSetting": "value" }
}

A plugin's manifest sets its defaults and its README should list its keys. argus.plugins.paths loads extra plugin folders from anywhere on disk, which is how you run one straight from a checkout.

Writing one

See DEVELOPING.md for the API, the manifest and a worked example.

Requirements

• VS Code 1.90 or newer.
• The Claude Code extension, which Argus uses to open sessions. Argus relies on its claude-vscode.editor.open command and the session registry it keeps at ~/.claude/sessions/<pid>.json. Neither is a documented public API, and both may change.
• Node.js 24 or newer. The session tracker hook is a TypeScript file that Node runs natively.
• Optional: git, for worktrees and diff review.
• Optional: the GitHub CLI (gh), signed in, for PR status and PR diffs.

Settings

Commands

• Argus: Open Control Center (argus.openControlCenter)
• Argus: Sessions Needing You (argus.sessions.showAttention)
• Argus: Set Up Session Tracking (argus.sessions.installHooks)
• Argus: Remove Session Tracking (argus.sessions.removeHooks)
• Argus: Review Worktree Diff (argus.diffReview.pick)
• Argus: Show Claude Plan Usage (argus.usage.show)
• Argus: Refresh Claude Plan Usage (argus.usage.refresh)
• Argus: Reload Plugins (argus.plugins.reload)
• Argus: Run Plugin Command (argus.plugins.runCommand)
• Argus: Open Plugins Folder (argus.plugins.openFolder)
• Argus: Reset Plugin Trust (argus.plugins.resetTrust)

The Sessions view also has toolbar and per-card commands (new chat, refresh, open, rename, mark read, archive/unarchive, open worktree in a new window) on its icons and context menu.

What Argus reads and writes

Argus is local-only. It has no telemetry.

Network use: gh calls to GitHub for PR state and PR diffs, using your existing gh login, and the Claude plan usage call above. A plugin may make its own network calls; see its README.

Troubleshooting

• No sessions appear: run Argus: Set Up Session Tracking, check that node --version is 24 or newer in a terminal, then start a new Claude Code session.
• Interrupted sessions, sub-agents or a fix to the hook don't show up after updating Argus: run Argus: Set Up Session Tracking again to install the latest hook.
• Sessions stop updating after a Claude Code or VS Code update: Argus depends on claude-vscode.editor.open and Claude Code's session registry file, neither of which is a stable public API. If either changes shape, opening sessions and session detection can break until Argus is updated.
• PR status fails: run gh auth status. If gh is installed but not found, make sure it is on the PATH VS Code was launched with.

Uninstalling

Uninstalling the extension removes the hook entries from ~/.claude/settings.json automatically, the same as running Argus: Remove Session Tracking first. Your session records under ~/.claude/argus/sessions are kept.

License

MIT.