clobserve

A terminal observatory for Claude Code. Browse every workspace, session, and conversation Claude Code has touched on your machine — and surface behavioral patterns across sessions.

What it does

Claude Code writes every conversation, tool call, error, and interrupt to structured JSONL files in ~/.claude/projects/. clobserve reads those files locally and gives you:

• Workspace list — all projects Claude Code has touched, sorted by recent activity
• Session browser — pick a session and read the conversation or browse raw events
• Aggregate stats — message counts, tool call rates, error rates, session durations
• Signal analysis — automated detection of behavioral anti-patterns across sessions:
  • Edit thrashing (same file edited 5+ times)
  • Error loops (consecutive tool failures)
  • Excessive exploration (high read-to-edit ratio)
  • Correction-heavy sessions (user repeatedly saying "no", "wrong")
  • Keep-going loops (user nudging Claude because it stops early)
  • Repeated instructions (Claude didn't act on something the first time)
  • Negative sentiment drift (conversation tone worsens over a session)
  • Rapid corrections (user responds in under 10 seconds)
  • High abandonment rate (many very short sessions)
  • Restart clusters (multiple sessions started within 30 minutes)

Nothing is sent anywhere. clobserve is purely local and read-only.

Requirements

• Node.js 18+
• Claude Code installed (provides the session transcripts at ~/.claude/projects/)

Usage

Run without installing:

npx clobserve

Install globally:

npm install -g clobserve
clobserve

Navigation

Workspace list
  ↑↓ / j k        Navigate
  Enter            Select workspace
  type # + Enter   Jump to item by number
  q                Quit

Project menu
  ↑↓ / Enter       Select option
  q                Back

Session browser
  ↑↓ / j k        Navigate
  Enter            Open session
  q                Back

Conversation reader (inside a session)
  ↑↓ / j k        Scroll line by line
  PgUp / PgDn      Scroll fast
  g / G            Jump to top / bottom
  t                Toggle thinking blocks
  q                Back

Event pager (inside a session)
  ↑↓ / j k        Navigate events
  ← → / p n       Previous / next page
  Enter            Open focused event detail
  r                Switch to conversation reader
  f                Show files touched in session
  e                Toggle errors-only view
  s                Session summary
  type # + Enter   Jump to event number
  q                Back

Focused event detail
  ← → / p n       Previous / next event
  t                Toggle thinking expansion
  q                Back to page

Signal severity

| Badge | Meaning | |----------|------------------------------------------------| | [CRIT] | Severe pattern, likely causing major friction | | [HIGH] | Significant pattern worth investigating | | [MED ] | Moderate signal, monitor if it recurs | | [LOW ] | Mild signal, context-dependent |

Development

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Build once
npm run build

# Build in watch mode
npm run dev

# Run the built CLI
node dist/cli.js

The entry point is src/cli.ts. Signal detectors live in src/signals/. The indexer that scans ~/.claude/projects/ is src/indexer.ts.

Publishing

npm publish

The prepublishOnly script runs npm run build automatically.