Cognitrace
Cognitrace automatically logs all interactions with AI coding assistants — prompts and responses — into a structured JSON file inside your project. No configuration required.
Supported assistants
- Claude Code (VS Code extension and CLI)
- GitHub Copilot Chat
- OpenAI Codex CLI
- Antigravity
How it works
When activated, Cognitrace watches the session files that each AI assistant writes locally and captures every user message and assistant response. Logs are written to a .ai_log/ folder at the root of your workspace.
Each log file is named prompt_log_YYYY-MM-DD_<git-username>.json and contains an array of entries:
[
{
"timestamp": "2025-04-12T10:32:00.000Z",
"source": "claude",
"git_branch": "main",
"git_user_name": "Jane Doe",
"call_context": {
"cwd": "/Users/jane/projects/my-app"
},
"role": "user",
"content": "refactor the auth module to use JWT"
},
{
"timestamp": "2025-04-12T10:32:05.000Z",
"source": "claude",
"git_branch": "main",
"git_user_name": "Jane Doe",
"call_context": {
"cwd": "/Users/jane/projects/my-app"
},
"role": "assistant",
"content": "Here's the refactored auth module using JWT..."
}
]
| Field |
Description |
timestamp |
ISO 8601 timestamp of when the message was captured |
source |
Which assistant produced the message (claude, github_copilot, codex, antigravity) |
git_branch |
Active git branch at the time of the interaction |
git_user_name |
Git user name from the workspace config |
call_context.cwd |
Absolute path of the workspace |
role |
user for prompts, assistant for AI responses |
content |
The message text |
Output channel
Open View > Output and select Cognitrace from the dropdown to see real-time diagnostic logs — which directories are being watched, which files are detected, and which messages are captured.
Notes
- The
.ai_log/ folder is created automatically. Add it to .gitignore if you don't want logs committed.
- Logs are append-only and split by day and git user, so parallel sessions don't overwrite each other.
- No data is sent anywhere. Everything stays on disk, locally.
