Claude PR Review

A VS Code extension that lets code reviewers step into the exact Claude Code session from a PR branch — ask the author questions, read files, and make edits, all with full context.

How it works

When a developer works with Claude Code on a feature branch, the session captures the full context: every question asked, every file read, every decision made. This extension packages that session and lets a reviewer resume it — so instead of reading a diff blind, you can ask why a decision was made and get an answer from the same AI that made it.

Setup

Coder (the person writing the code)

Run this once per machine after installing the extension:

Cmd+Shift+P → Claude PR Review: Setup Auto-Snapshot (Coder Mode)

This installs a hook into Claude Code that automatically saves a .snapshot file to your repo root every time you end a Claude session. The file is named after your current branch (e.g. feature-auth.snapshot).

Workflow:

1. Work on your feature branch with Claude Code as usual
2. When you exit Claude (/exit or Ctrl+C), the snapshot is saved automatically
3. Commit the .snapshot file with your branch and push

git add feature-auth.snapshot
git commit -m "add session snapshot"
git push

Reviewer (the person reviewing the code)

Workflow:

1. Check out the PR branch locally

2. Open the folder in VS Code

3. A notification appears automatically:

   PR Review snapshot found — feature-auth Load Session · Choose Directory… · Dismiss

4. Click Load Session

5. A terminal opens running claude --resume with the full session context loaded

You now have a Claude Code session with complete knowledge of everything that happened during development. Ask it anything:

• "Why did you structure it this way?"
• "What alternatives did you consider?"
• "Can you show me the tests for this?"
• "Make this change..."

Manual load

If the notification doesn't appear, or you want to load a snapshot file from anywhere:

Cmd+Shift+P → Claude PR Review: Load Snapshot…

Or right-click any .snapshot file in the Explorer sidebar → Claude PR Review: Load This Snapshot.

Requirements

• Claude Code installed and on your PATH (claude --version should work in terminal)
• Python 3 (python3 --version should work in terminal)
• The PR branch checked out locally

FAQ

Do I need to commit the snapshot file? Yes — the reviewer gets it by checking out your branch. You can add *.snapshot to .gitignore if you don't want it in the repo, but then you'd need to share the file manually.

Is the snapshot file large? Typically 50–500 KB depending on session length. It's plain JSON.

Can the reviewer make real code edits? Yes. The resumed session has full Claude Code access — file reads, edits, bash commands, everything.

What if I had multiple Claude sessions on the same branch? The hook picks the session with the most activity on that branch. You can override with python3 export.py --list to see all candidates.

The snapshot notification didn't appear. Try Cmd+Shift+P → Claude PR Review: Load Snapshot… to load it manually. Make sure the .snapshot file is in the root of the folder you have open in VS Code.