Coding Agent Live Inspector

Open any Copilot CLI session and see, on one page, where its time, tokens and credits went — and what to change so the next session is faster.

• Verdict — ranked findings with evidence: files re-read without changes, commands repeated or failing in a loop, slow and background work, low-yield delegations, likely hallucinations.
• Trajectory — every agent as a lane on one timeline (idle gaps compressed), with prompts, spawns, errors and compactions. Drag across it and every panel re-scopes to that range.
• Where time went — thinking vs reading vs editing vs running vs waiting on agents or on you.
• Hotspots — files, commands, tools, errors (with the likely cause), models and credits over time, context growth, and what each of your prompts cost.
• Delegation — what each subagent was asked, what it returned, how long the parent waited.
• Retrospective — when a session finishes meaningful work, the model reviews the whole conversation against these measurements and says what confused it and what to change. Nothing is added to the conversation history.

It reads the logs Copilot already writes (~/.copilot*/session-state). A small read-only extension adds per-call usage and liveness, and keeps the dashboard running. No tools, hooks or permissions are registered.

Install

One command (needs Node ≥ 22.18 and the Copilot CLI):

npx @nexaitech/coding-agent-live-inspector install     # or: bunx @nexaitech/coding-agent-live-inspector install

It adds the extension to every ~/.copilot* home, starts the dashboard at http://localhost:4322 and tells you how to open it from other devices. npx @nexaitech/coding-agent-live-inspector url | status | stop | uninstall manage it later; uninstall keeps your inspector data unless you delete it.

Other ways, for machines without npm access:

node dist/cli.js pack                                  # → artifacts/live-inspector-<version>.sh (one file)
scp artifacts/live-inspector-3.0.0.sh host: && ssh host sh live-inspector-3.0.0.sh
node dist/cli.js deploy <ssh-host>                     # the same, in one step

Re-running any of them replaces a running older build. The dashboard listens on all interfaces, port 4322 (LIVE_INSPECTOR_HOST=127.0.0.1 keeps it local). Requests from the machine itself need no key; other devices open the private link once per browser (each machine has its own key). HTTP is unencrypted — use trusted networks.

Use

Each Copilot session prints its own link when it starts. live-inspector status | start | stop | restart manage the dashboard. Retrospectives run automatically after a task completes, or after the session has been idle for 10 minutes following substantial work; press Run retrospective to run one now.

Develop

AGENTS.md has the commands, ARCHITECTURE.md the design. node dist/cli.js link makes every Copilot home load this checkout's build, so each npm run build is live (restart the dashboard for server changes; reload extensions in a session for collector changes).