Claude Recall for VS Code

Never lose an agent session again. Every Claude Code and Codex session gets labeled with the name of the terminal it ran in. Automatically.

Claude Recall is a local-first memory tool that indexes every Claude Code and Codex session you have ever run and makes them searchable from the recall CLI, a browser UI, and an MCP server. Both agents are indexed by default with no configuration, and every session records which agent produced it so you can filter on it. This extension is the VS Code companion that gives every session a meaningful name with zero manual steps. Renames in your editor propagate to your session library automatically.

_{The library this extension keeps labeled for you.}

_{Claude calls Recall as native MCP tools. Searches your history. Pulls context. Decides.}

_{Cost analytics. Hover any day. Exact cost. Exact tokens.}

_{Collections. Drag-to-organize sessions across projects.}

_{Or stay in the terminal. recall tui ships the same library as a full-screen terminal app.}

_{Built specifically for coding agents, not adapted from notes apps.}

What it does

1. Name your terminal tabs the way you already do (auth-refactor, billing-bug, dashboard-v2).
2. Start Claude Code or Codex in any of those tabs as you normally would. The extension reads the command token, so claude and codex are recognised behind an absolute path or a runner prefix like npx or pnpm dlx.
3. The session shows up in Claude Recall labeled with the tab name. Rename the tab mid-session and the alias updates live.

Works in VS Code, VS Code Insiders, Cursor, and Windsurf.

Both agents, one library

Two things are worth knowing before you install, so read them here rather than discover them later.

Auto-alias ships off. claude-recall.autoAlias defaults to false. Until you turn it on, the extension registers nothing with the daemon and the status bar reads ⊘ Recall. One setting, described under Enable.

Codex tab correlation reads the open-file table. Codex holds its transcript file open for the life of the thread, so the daemon identifies the writing process with lsof instead of guessing from timing. That runs on macOS and Linux and is off on Windows, where recall doctor reports the branch as disabled. Everything else about Codex is unaffected and works on every supported platform: indexing, titles, search, cost accounting, and the agent filter. A live Codex tab also binds on the daemon's sweep rather than instantly, so it can read "Waiting for conversation…" briefly before it attaches.

What's new in 0.23

Codex is named everywhere it is already supported

The listing, the README and the marketplace metadata now say plainly that this extension covers Codex as well as Claude Code. Nothing about the extension's behavior changed in 0.23.0 — Codex indexing, titles, search, cost accounting and the agent filter all shipped earlier. What changed is that the documentation stopped describing a Claude-Code-only product. The two limits worth knowing before you install are stated above under Both agents, one library: auto-alias ships off, and Codex tab correlation is macOS/Linux only.

Earlier: what landed in 0.22

Open terminals show up before you type anything

A Claude Code or Codex tab used to stay invisible until it had written three messages. It now appears at the top of the sessions list the moment it launches, with its tab name, before the first prompt. Close the tab and the live row disappears while its history stays put. Reusing a shell never shows the previous conversation as the new launch, and a session already listed as live is never listed twice. The floor for listing a session dropped from three messages to one, so a session with a single indexed message attaches to its launch instead of waiting.

One lookup for history and live terminals

Find session history and live terminals in the command palette searches your Recall history and the terminals running right now, together. Search by current name or by a name a session used previously. The same lookup is available as recall locate on the CLI, as the locate_sessions MCP tool, and in the web app, so you get the same answer wherever you ask (Pro).

Every terminal reports its own agent and its own folder

The terminal breadcrumb now records which agent is running in the tab, so renaming a tab scopes to that agent instead of affecting its neighbors. Each terminal also reports its real working directory rather than the workspace root, which stops sessions started in a subfolder from being filed under the wrong project.

Recent releases

Full history: CHANGELOG.md.

Install

Open the Extensions panel (Cmd+Shift+X / Ctrl+Shift+X), search Claude Recall, install the entry by publisher clauderecallhq.

You also need the Recall daemon running. Install the CLI:

npm install -g @clauderecallhq/cli
recall start

Requires VS Code 1.85 or newer and Node 22 LTS or newer on macOS (Apple Silicon / Intel), Linux x64 / arm64 (glibc), or Windows 10+ x64.

Enable

The extension ships with auto-alias off. In VS Code settings (Cmd+, / Ctrl+,) flip claude-recall.autoAlias from its default of false to true. A ⟳ Recall · N indicator appears in the status bar showing how many terminals are connected to your session library. Until you flip it, the status bar reads ⊘ Recall, no terminal is registered, and nothing is sent anywhere.

Settings

Commands

How it works

1. The extension watches every VS Code terminal you have open. It reports the tab name to the local Claude Recall daemon and updates that name whenever you rename the tab.
2. When a terminal starts an agent, the extension tells the daemon which terminal it started in and which of the two agents it is. It reads the command token rather than the whole line, so claude and codex still count behind a path or a runner prefix, while echo claude and codex-code-mode-host correctly do not.
3. The daemon labels the new session with that terminal's tab name, filed under the agent the extension named. A Codex start is never handed to a Claude Code session in the same folder, or the reverse.
4. Codex keeps its transcript file open for as long as the thread lives, so the daemon also runs a sweep that reads the open-file table to name the writing process. Codex has no session-start hook of its own, so that sweep is what tells a live Codex tab which conversation it is holding.
5. For sessions that ran before the daemon knew about them, the v0.12 scrollback matcher reconnects them by spotting verbatim text from the conversation in your open terminal buffers.

Everything happens on your machine. Nothing about your code, prompts, or terminal output ever leaves 127.0.0.1.

Troubleshooting

Status bar shows ⊘ Recall Auto-alias is off. Flip claude-recall.autoAlias to true in settings.

Status bar shows nothing The Recall daemon is not running. Run recall status to check, recall start to fix.

Status bar shows ⟳ Recall · 0 but terminals are open Run Claude Recall: Re-register all open terminals from the command palette.

Renames in VS Code not appearing in Claude Recall Open the Claude Recall Output channel from the View menu. Every rename the extension detects is logged there with the before and after tab name. If you do not see your rename in the log, try renaming the tab one more time. Some terminal title overrides from other extensions can race with our detection on the first edit.

A live Codex tab says "Waiting for conversation…" The daemon attaches a Codex tab to its conversation on a sweep rather than instantly, so give it a moment. If it never attaches, run recall doctor and read the Codex block. correlation: available (lsof at …) means the mechanism is on. On Windows that line reports the branch as off, which is expected and not a fault: Codex sessions still index, title, and search normally there.

An old session is still showing as unlinked Open it in the web UI. With 0.12+ installed, the system tries to relink it the moment you open it by matching scrollback content from your live terminals. If the original terminal was closed long ago, click the chain icon next to the title and pick the right terminal from the list.

Privacy

We promise three things:

1. Nothing leaves your machine. Every byte the extension produces is bound for 127.0.0.1 and the local daemon. There are no background or automatic network calls. No telemetry. No analytics. The only external navigation is the pricing page your browser opens when you click Upgrade to Pro.
2. Secrets get redacted before they leave the extension. The redaction filter runs inside the extension on every byte of terminal output. Anthropic, OpenAI, GitHub, AWS, Slack-style keys, Bearer tokens, JWTs, and PASSWORD= / API_KEY= style assignments are replaced with placeholders before the daemon ever sees them.
3. The extension never reads your code. No editor buffer access. It never reads your clipboard, and the only thing that ever writes to it is the locate command's "Copy session reference" action, when you pick it. No files outside the daemon's port file and its sibling auth-token file. It does read a rolling 4 KB tail of shell-integrated command output while claude-recall.captureScrollback is on, so a session can be matched to its tab; secrets are redacted before that tail leaves the extension and it goes only to the daemon on 127.0.0.1.

What the extension actually sends to the daemon, in plain English:

Buffers live in daemon memory only. They never reach disk.

Codex support added no network traffic of any kind, and it reads exactly two things under your Codex home: the rollout transcripts under sessions/, and session_index.jsonl, which is where Codex records the name you gave a thread. Both are opened read-only, symlinks out of that folder are refused, and nothing under the Codex home is ever written. Your Codex credentials, config, and hooks are never opened.

Built for security teams

• Zero runtime dependencies. The published .vsix ships only our own bundled JavaScript, an icon, and metadata. There is no transitive supply chain to audit.
• Localhost-only by construction. The HTTP client refuses any host other than 127.0.0.1. The connection target is enforced in code, not configuration.
• No webview, no HTML rendering. The extension's UI surfaces are a status bar text indicator, plain markdown editor tabs (Neighborhood), and standard VS Code terminals running fixed recall commands (doctor/optimize).
• Hard timeouts on every daemon request so a hung daemon never blocks the editor.

Links

• Product site: clauderecall.com
• CLI on npm: @clauderecallhq/cli
• Pricing & Pro: clauderecall.com/pricing
• Public profile: gitlab.com/clauderecallhq/clauderecallhq
• Send feedback from inside the CLI: recall feedback
• Changelog: CHANGELOG.md