Session Atlas

Visualize, organize, and navigate your Claude Code chat sessions.

Session Atlas gives you a bird's-eye view of all your Claude Code conversations — grouped by topic, laid out on a timeline, and searchable at a glance. Stop scrolling through a flat dropdown to find that one conversation from last week.

Features

Topics View

Sessions grouped by topic with color-coded headers. Each card shows the session title, size, message count, creation date, and how recently it was touched.

Timeline View

Zoomable swimlane visualization showing when each session was created, how long it lasted, and how it relates to other sessions across topics.

• Scroll to zoom in/out (anchored at cursor position)
• Shift+scroll to pan when zoomed
• Session lifespan toggle to show creation-to-last-touched duration lines
• Day boundary dividers for orientation
• Minimum zoom: 15 minutes. Maximum: full history.

Auto-Categorize with Claude

One-click AI-powered topic assignment using the Claude CLI. Press Auto-categorize and Claude analyzes your session titles to suggest 3-12 meaningful topic categories.

• Uses your existing Claude subscription (no extra API key needed)
• Only categorizes uncategorized sessions (never overwrites manual assignments)
• Requires the Claude CLI — the extension detects it automatically

Manual Topic Management

• Assign topics via dropdown on each session card
• Create new topics on the fly
• Set session status (Active / Parked / Done)
• All assignments persist across VS Code restarts

Workspace Scoping

• This workspace — show only sessions from the current project
• All workspaces — show sessions across all Claude Code projects on your machine

Session Detail Panel

Click any session to see:

• Full preview of the first message
• Creation and last-active timestamps
• "Find in Dropdown" helper — tells you exactly where to find the session in Claude Code's native conversation picker

Getting Started

1. Install the extension
2. Open the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P / Cmd+Shift+P)
3. Run Session Atlas: Open
4. Your sessions appear immediately — no configuration needed

Optional: AI-Powered Topics

For automatic topic categorization, install the Claude CLI:

npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code

If you already use Claude Code, the CLI shares the same authentication — no additional login required. Once installed, the Auto-categorize button appears automatically.

How It Works

Session Atlas reads the JSONL conversation files that Claude Code stores locally on your machine (~/.claude/projects/). Everything happens locally:

• No data is sent anywhere (except to Claude when you press Auto-categorize)
• No API keys required for the core functionality
• No telemetry, no analytics, no network calls
• Topic assignments are stored in the extension's local storage

Requirements

• VS Code 1.85.0 or later
• Claude Code VS Code extension (for the session files to exist)
• Node.js (for the Claude CLI, if you want auto-categorization)

Privacy

This extension reads Claude Code's local session files to extract metadata (titles, timestamps, message counts). It never reads the full conversation content beyond the first message (used as the session title/preview). No data leaves your machine unless you explicitly press the Auto-categorize button, which sends session titles to Claude via the CLI.

Platform Support

• Windows — tested and verified
• macOS / Linux — expected to work but not yet tested; feedback welcome

Known Limitations

• Session format depends on Claude Code's internal JSONL structure, which may change between versions
• Auto-categorize requires the Claude CLI installed separately
• Topic assignments are per-machine (not synced across devices)

Feedback & Contributions

Issues and pull requests welcome on GitHub.

License

MIT - Copyright (c) 2026 BelAInnovations