claude-replay

Claude Replay

The observability layer for Claude Code sessions — search, analytics, and visualization across every project.

Claude Code's --resume/--continue and /rewind recover the session you're in. Claude Replay does the part they don't: it hooks passively into every session, records what happened to a local SQLite store, and makes every past session — across every project — searchable, comparable, measurable, and exportable. Full-text search, per-session insight metrics, death-cause classification (why a session ended), session diffing, a web dashboard, and a terminal UI — none of which Claude Code has natively.

Claude Code session
        |
   hooks (PreToolUse · PostToolUse · Stop)
        |
        v
   ~/.claude-replay/sessions.db   ← events + checkpoints
        |
   +----+--------------------+
   |          |              |
 MCP tools  Dashboard      TUI
 (resume)   :8766          (browse)

Passive hooks write. MCP tools, the web dashboard, and the terminal UI read. Nothing leaves your machine.

How this complements native Claude Code

Claude Replay is additive — it layers on top of the built-ins, it doesn't replace them.

You want to…	Use
Resume / continue the current session	Native claude --continue, --resume
Undo file + conversation changes in a session	Native /rewind
Search every past session by content, tool, or outcome	Replay search
See why a session ended + per-session metrics	Replay status / replay_insights
Compare two runs side by side	Replay diff
Visualize a session timeline / browse all projects	Replay dashboard + TUI
Export a session as HTML / JSON / Markdown	Replay export --format

Think of native resume/rewind as recovery, and Replay as observability over your whole history.

Architecture

Passive hooks write to SQLite. MCP tools read from SQLite. Dashboard + TUI visualize SQLite. That's the whole system.

Layer	File	Role
Store	claude_replay/store.py	All DB access — sessions, events, checkpoints
Hooks	claude_replay/hooks.py	Record tool calls + auto-checkpoint, dispatched by claude-replay hook <type>
Recovery	claude_replay/resume.py	Generate a resume brief from a session
Export	claude_replay/export.py	Render a session as a self-contained HTML trace
Server	claude_replay/server.py	Starlette app — MCP SSE + JSON API + static dashboard
TUI	claude_replay/tui.py + tui_client.py	Textual session browser over the JSON API
CLI	claude_replay/cli.py	Every subcommand

Port 8766 deliberately one above Claude Bridge's 8765, so the two siblings can run side by side without colliding.

Quickstart

1. Install

pip install claude-replay

Or from a clone if you'd like to hack on it:

git clone https://github.com/constripacity/Claude-Replay.git
cd Claude-Replay
pip install -e .[dev]              # editable install with test/lint deps
pip install -e .[tui]             # add the terminal UI deps (textual, httpx)

If pip install -e fails on your environment (a known hatchling editable-install quirk on some setups), install the deps directly instead: pip install mcp starlette uvicorn anyio textual httpx.

2. Install the hooks

This wires Replay into Claude Code by merging three hooks into ~/.claude/settings.json. It's idempotent and leaves any other tools' hooks untouched.

claude-replay install

✓ Installed Claude Replay hooks into ~/.claude/settings.json
  PreToolUse  → claude-replay hook pre-tool
  PostToolUse → claude-replay hook post-tool
  Stop        → claude-replay hook stop

From now on, every Claude Code session is recorded automatically. Remove the hooks any time with claude-replay uninstall (it removes only Replay's hooks).

Confirm it's actually wired up — the one check that matters:

claude-replay doctor

Claude Replay — doctor

  ✓ Hooks installed: PreToolUse / PostToolUse / Stop are in settings.json
  ✓ Hook command on PATH: claude-replay → …/claude-replay
  ✓ Database: ~/.claude-replay/sessions.db
  ✓ Sessions recorded: 3 sessions; most recent 5m ago

All good — Replay is installed and recording. ✓

If doctor warns that claude-replay isn't on PATH, the hooks can't run and nothing is recorded — put your install directory on PATH and re-run it.

3. Start the server (dashboard + MCP tools)

claude-replay serve                 # defaults: 127.0.0.1:8766
claude-replay serve --port 9000     # custom port
claude-replay serve --host 0.0.0.0  # bind all interfaces

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
  Claude Replay — Session checkpoint & recovery server
  Version: 0.3.0
  DB: ~/.claude-replay/sessions.db
  http://localhost:8766/             ← Dashboard
  http://localhost:8766/sse          ← MCP config
  http://localhost:8766/api/state    ← JSON state
  http://localhost:8766/status       ← Health check
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

4. (Optional) Register the MCP tools with Claude Code

So a running Claude Code session can call replay_resume, replay_checkpoint, etc. directly. Two ways:

SSE (alongside the dashboard — needs claude-replay serve running):

claude mcp add --transport sse -s user claude-replay http://localhost:8766/sse

stdio (no server process — the client launches Replay on demand):

claude mcp add -s user claude-replay -- claude-replay mcp
# or, without installing: uvx claude-replay mcp

Verify with claude mcp list claude-replay should show ✓ Connected. Inside an already-running session, type /mcp to re-handshake.

When a session dies

# What's the state of the last session?
claude-replay status

# Print a paste-ready resume brief (most recent session, or pass an id)
claude-replay resume
claude-replay resume <session-id>

# Browse every recorded session in the terminal
claude-replay tui                   # needs `claude-replay serve` running

# Export a session as a self-contained HTML trace
claude-replay export                # → ~/.claude-replay/exports/<id>.html

Paste the resume output into a fresh Claude Code session and it picks up where the dead one left off objective, what was done, what's next, and which files were touched.

MCP Tools

Every connected Claude Code session gets these ten tools:

Tool	Description
replay_status	Current session summary objective, status, how it ended, event/checkpoint counts, last activity
replay_checkpoint	Force a checkpoint of the current session now, with an optional note
replay_resume	Generate a structured resume brief for a session (default: most recent)
replay_sessions	List recent sessions with status, model, duration, checkpoint count
replay_insights	Per-session metrics: how it ended, duration, tool calls, error rate, files touched, top tools
replay_stats	Cross-session analytics: tool calls, error rate, why sessions end, tool mix, per-project rollups
replay_search	Full-text search across sessions with filters (tool, cause, date, project), ranked by match count
replay_diff	Compare two sessions: metric deltas + which files each touched
replay_tag	Name a session and add/remove tags for later retrieval
replay_export	Render a session as a self-contained trace (html / json / md) and return the path

CLI Reference

Command	What it does
claude-replay install	Merge Replay's hooks into ~/.claude/settings.json (idempotent)
claude-replay uninstall	Remove only Replay's hooks
claude-replay status	Current/last session at a glance, with insight metrics
claude-replay sessions [--limit N]	List recent sessions (with names + tags)
claude-replay search <query> [--tool T] [--cause C] [--since 7d] [--project P]	Full-text search with filters (omit query to browse by filter)
claude-replay diff <session-a> <session-b>	Compare two sessions side by side
claude-replay resume [session_id]	Print a resume brief (default: most recent)
claude-replay export [session_id] [--output DIR] [--format html|json|md]	Render a trace
claude-replay tag [session_id] [--name N] [--add a,b] [--remove c] [--clear]	Name or tag a session
claude-replay prune [--older-than 30d] [--yes]	Delete sessions with no recent activity (destructive)
claude-replay serve [--host H] [--port P]	Start the MCP + dashboard server (port 8766)
claude-replay mcp	Serve the MCP tools over stdio (for uvx claude-replay mcp / MCP clients)
claude-replay tui [--url URL]	Launch the terminal session browser
claude-replay reset [--yes]	Delete all recorded sessions (destructive)
claude-replay hook <pre-tool|post-tool|stop>	Internal — invoked by Claude Code's hooks

Dashboard & TUI

Web dashboard (claude-replay serve, then open http://localhost:8766/) a vanilla-JS view that polls every 2 s: session list (with how-it-ended badge + tags), a live search box, per-session timeline, and one-click "Copy Resume Brief" / "Export HTML". No CDN, no build step.

Terminal UI (claude-replay tui) a Textual browser in the same dark theme. A session sidebar, a live event feed, and a detail inspector showing how the session ended, its tags, the latest checkpoint, and files touched. Keys:

↑↓ navigate   Tab switch panel   Space pause
r  resume (copies the brief to your clipboard)
e  export HTML trace
?  help        q quit

The TUI talks to the server over HTTP start claude-replay serve first (defaults to http://127.0.0.1:8766; point elsewhere with --url).

Configuration

Env var	Default	Purpose
CLAUDE_REPLAY_DB	~/.claude-replay/sessions.db	SQLite store location
CLAUDE_SESSION_ID / CLAUDE_CODE_SESSION_ID	—	Session identity (Claude Code sets this in the hook payload); falls back to these env vars, then to a hash of the project dir
CLAUDE_REPLAY_CORS_ORIGIN	localhost only	Comma-separated extra CORS origins for the server
CLAUDE_REPLAY_NO_DASHBOARD	—	Set to disable the static dashboard mount (MCP/JSON only)

The hook path is offline-first by design: it makes no network calls and completes in well under 50 ms just the one SQLite write. Large tool payloads are truncated at 8 KB per event so the DB stays lean.

Development

pip install -e .[dev]               # or install deps directly (see install note)
python -m pytest                    # full suite
ruff check .

Tests use an isolated tmp_path SQLite database (the fresh_db fixture) — they never touch your real ~/.claude-replay/sessions.db. See CONTRIBUTING.md for the scope and the coding rules.

License

MIT see LICENSE.

Sibling to Claude Bridge. Built under the Constripacity banner.