Session Watchtower for Claude Code

See what every Claude Code session is doing — and exactly which files it touched.

Unofficial community extension. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Anthropic.

Screenshot with demo data.

Features

• Session status at a glance — a roomy list in the same colors as Claude Code's session list: green working, blue waiting for your approval or answer, orange just finished, grey idle, hollow off — plus the time since the last conversation. Sessions in the current folder come first; sessions from other folders are grouped and collapsed below. A badge counts sessions that are waiting for you.
• The same list as Claude Code, with an Archived section — this folder's sessions are listed even when nothing is running (for example right after a restart), newest conversation first. Sessions that have been quiet for longer than Claude Code's Archive Inactive Sessions setting go to a collapsed Archived section (the clock button on that section lets you pick your own time, for example 1 day), and the archive button on a row moves a session there by hand. An archived session comes back by itself when it gets a new message. Sessions from other folders follow the same timing: recent ones are listed in their folder group even when they are not running, older ones are left to that folder's own window. Sessions that ran in a git worktree made by Claude Code are grouped under their repository with a worktree tag.
• What it is doing now — under a working or waiting session, a short line such as Running: npm test or Editing README.md, plus the size of its changes (+142 −38 with a small green/red bar). The ? button explains every color. Works in dark and light themes.
• Changed files per session — edits from Claude's Edit/Write tools, shell commands and git commits, with +added −removed line counts and times. Click a file to open a diff.
• See which file is being edited right now — a file gets a green spinner while a working session is editing it: changed in the last 30 seconds (including changes a script made on disk), or an edit that has not finished. An edit that waits for your approval gets a blue bell.
• Review a whole session — one click opens every file the session changed in a single multi-file diff. For files changed only with edit tools or commits, the right side is the file as the session left it, so other sessions' later edits don't get mixed in.
• Status bar summary — working · waiting · just finished counts are always visible at the bottom; it turns to a warning color while a session waits for you.
• Jump to the conversation — click a session to open it in Claude Code, or start a new one with New session.
• Find sessions fast — Open shows only sessions that are open right now (working, waiting or idle); the search box filters by title.
• Codex too — Codex sessions from ~/.codex/sessions appear next to Claude sessions with a Codex tag: files edited with apply_patch (the older tool-call form and the current script form), files its shell commands changed (best effort) and its commits. Review and sub-agent threads are folded into the session that started them.
• Read-only and light — never modifies your files. Parsing runs on a worker thread, only newly appended log lines are read, and what was read is cached so reopening VS Code is instant.

File colors

Colors follow the usual git convention and only say what happened to the file:

How a change was detected is shown by the icon of each entry when you expand a file: pencil for edit tools, terminal for shell commands, commit for git commits.

Where the data comes from

Session status (working · waiting · idle) is read from the files Claude Code writes in ~/.claude/sessions/. A session that became idle within the last 10 minutes is shown as just finished. A session that is not listed there is shown as off. If you use a hook that writes <first 12 hex of sha256(session id)>.pending files when an approval prompt appears, point attentionMarkerDir at that folder for an extra "waiting for you" signal.

Privacy

Everything stays on your machine. The extension only reads ~/.claude/projects, ~/.claude/sessions and ~/.codex/sessions (and runs git in your repositories to list commit files). Its read cache lives in VS Code's private storage for this extension. It makes no network requests and collects no telemetry.

Requirements and limitations

• Claude Code must run on the same machine as the extension. Over Remote-SSH the extension runs on the remote host automatically.
• It relies on Claude Code's internal, undocumented file formats. A Claude Code update may break parts of it.
• Opening a conversation uses an internal Claude Code command (tested with Claude Code 2.1.322).
• Files written by scripts that Claude Code does not record and that are never committed cannot be detected.
• Codex has no list of running sessions, so a Codex session counts as working only while its log changed in the last 90 seconds. Codex conversations can't be opened from here, and Codex sessions are shown only while their log changed inside the time range (no history list).
• Codex edits are read from the patch text in its log. Checked against Codex's own per-file records in real logs, 98% of edits were found (2,094 of 2,132); a patch that the script builds at run time, or a script that failed after its patch was applied, is missed.
• Just finished means the last conversation ended less than 10 minutes ago; unlike Claude Code's own "unread" mark it cannot know whether you already looked.
• Sessions you archived or restored by hand inside Claude Code cannot be detected (Claude Code keeps that list private), and neither can its "unread" mark. Everything else in the list follows the same rules, so the two lists can differ by those sessions. If you archive sessions by hand in Claude Code, set archiveAfter to a short time such as 1 day (clock button on the Archived section) so finished sessions leave the list here too, or use the archive button here. Sessions started by scripts through the SDK are left out of the history list, as in Claude Code.
• Edit tools finish in well under a second, so "being edited right now" is shown for 30 seconds after a change while the session keeps working. For changes made by scripts it is based on the file's modification time: only files the session has already changed are watched, and it cannot tell who changed the file.
• If the Sessions view says There is no data provider registered right after updating from 0.6.0, run Developer: Reload Window once (that version drew the view differently).
• The user interface is in English, and switches to Korean automatically when VS Code's display language is Korean.

Settings

Development

No build step and no dependencies. Run the tests with npm test (Node 20 or newer). They use a fake home folder with made-up session logs and a stub of the VS Code API, so they never read your real ~/.claude.

Feedback and contact

Questions, bug reports and ideas are welcome: k4858678@gmail.com

한국어 요약

Claude Code 세션마다 지금 작업 중인지 · 멈춰서 기다리는지 · 쉬는지와 그 세션이 바꾼 파일을 한 창에서 봅니다. 이 폴더 세션이 위에, 다른 폴더 세션은 접힌 묶음으로 아래에 나옵니다. 실행 중인 세션이 없어도(예: 컴퓨터를 새로 켠 직후) 이 폴더 세션이 Claude Code 목록처럼 나오고, 오래 대화가 없던 세션과 보관 단추로 넣은 세션은 접힌 보관함에 모입니다. 작업 중인 세션이 지금 고치는 파일에는 초록 회전 표시가 붙습니다. 세션을 누르면 Claude 대화 창이 열리고, "변경 전부 보기"로 그 세션이 바꾼 파일을 한 화면에서 검토합니다. 아래 상태 표시줄에 요약이 늘 보이며, Codex 세션도 함께 나옵니다. 파일 색은 git과 같습니다: 초록 A 새 파일, 노랑 M 수정, 빨강 D 지워짐, 회색 ? 추정. 파일은 읽기만 하며, 기록은 이 컴퓨터 밖으로 나가지 않습니다.

문의·버그 제보·아이디어: k4858678@gmail.com