Copilot Lens 👓

A local web dashboard to visualize, explore, and analyze your GitHub Copilot CLI terminal sessions. See your full conversation history, tool usage patterns, and usage analytics — all without leaving your machine.

Why Copilot Lens?

GitHub Copilot CLI stores session data locally, but there's no built-in way to browse or analyze it. Copilot Lens gives you a clean, interactive dashboard to:

• Review past sessions — What did you ask? What did Copilot do?
• Understand your usage patterns — Which repos, branches, and tools do you use most?
• Track your productivity — How much active time are you spending with Copilot?

Everything runs locally. No data leaves your machine. No cloud. No sign-in.

Install

npm install -g copilot-lens

Usage

# Start the dashboard
copilot-lens

# Auto-open in browser
copilot-lens --open

# Custom port
copilot-lens --port 8080

# Or use npx (no install needed)
npx copilot-lens --open

CLI Options

| Flag | Default | Description | |------|---------|-------------| | --port | 3000 | Port number | | --host | localhost | Host address | | --open | off | Auto-open browser |

Features

📋 Session Browser

• Browse all your Copilot CLI sessions in a searchable, filterable list
• Color-coded by directory — each project gets a unique accent color
• Status detection — see which sessions are Running, Completed, or Error
• Three filter dimensions — filter by time range, status, and directory
• Click any session to view full details

💬 Conversation View

• Chat-style layout with your prompts on the right and Copilot responses on the left
• View tool calls made during the session
• See any errors that occurred
• Read session plans (if created)

📊 Analytics Dashboard

Eight interactive charts powered by Chart.js, arranged in a 2-column grid:

| Chart | Type | What It Shows | |-------|------|---------------| | Sessions Per Day | Bar (compact) | Daily session activity over time | | Activity by Hour of Day | Bar (compact) | When during the day you use Copilot most | | Tool Usage | Doughnut | Most-used tools (grep, edit, powershell, etc.) | | Model Usage | Doughnut | Which AI models you've used (Claude, GPT, etc.) | | Top Working Directories | Horizontal bar (full-width) | Which project folders you use Copilot in most | | Time Per Branch | Horizontal bar | Active Copilot time spent on each git branch | | Time Per Repo | Horizontal bar | Active Copilot time per repository | | MCP Servers Used | Doughnut | Which MCP servers are configured across sessions |

Doughnut chart legends are interactive — click a label to toggle that segment's visibility.

Glimpse of Analytics Dashboard

🎨 UI Features

• Dark & Light mode — toggle with one click, preference is saved
• Manual refresh — refresh button to reload data on demand
• Responsive layout — works on any screen size
• 2-column grid layout — compact charts with no wasted space

🏆 Copilot Effectiveness Score

Per-repo scoring (0-100) that measures how effectively you use Copilot CLI, with actionable improvement tips.

| Category | What It Measures | |----------|-----------------| | Prompt Quality | Average prompt length, how often Copilot needs clarification | | Tool Utilization | Diversity of tools used (grep, glob, edit, task, etc.) | | Efficiency | Tool success rate and turns per session | | MCP Utilization | Configured MCP servers vs actually used (reads repo's mcp.json) | | Engagement | Session duration sweet spot and usage consistency |

How It Works

Copilot Lens reads session data from ~/.copilot/session-state/, where GitHub Copilot CLI stores:

• workspace.yaml — Session metadata (directory, git branch, timestamps)
• events.jsonl — Full event log (messages, tool calls, errors)
• plan.md — Session plans (if created)

A local Express server parses these files and serves a static frontend dashboard.

Duration Calculation

Session durations are calculated from actual event activity, not wall-clock time. Gaps longer than 5 minutes between events are excluded, so resumed sessions don't show inflated durations.

Status Detection

| Status | How It's Detected | |--------|-------------------| | Running | session.db exists and was modified within 10 min, or events.jsonl modified within 5 min | | Completed | Has an abort event with "user initiated" reason, or no recent activity | | Error | Has an abort event with a non-user-initiated reason |

Tech Stack

• Backend: Node.js + Express + TypeScript
• Frontend: Vanilla HTML/CSS/JavaScript
• Charts: Chart.js
• Data: YAML + JSONL parsing (no database required)

Development

git clone https://github.com/pavanvamsi3/copilot-lens.git
cd copilot-lens
npm install
npm run dev        # Start with tsx (no build needed)
npm run build      # Compile TypeScript
npm start          # Run compiled version

License

MIT

Optional: Custom Local Hostname

If you'd like a prettier URL like http://copilot.lens:3000, add this to your hosts file:

• Windows (run as Admin): echo 127.0.0.1 copilot.lens >> C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts
• macOS/Linux: echo "127.0.0.1 copilot.lens" | sudo tee -a /etc/hosts

Then run: copilot-lens --host copilot.lens