overnight

Claude Code stops when it hits a rate limit. You wake up, nothing got done.

overnight wraps your agent and handles it. Rate limits, crashes, hangs. When the limit clears it picks up right where it left off using the actual session ID, not a restart from scratch. Works on Windows without tmux or WSL.

Install

npm install -g overnight-cli

The command is still overnight.

Quick start

# Optional but worth it: set up Telegram so it pings you
overnight setup --telegram

# Then just prefix your normal claude command
overnight run -- claude -p "Build feature X" --dangerously-skip-permissions

That's it. Go to sleep.

What it does

| Situation | What overnight does | |---|---| | Rate limit | Waits for the reset, resumes with --resume SESSION_ID | | Crash | Restarts up to 3 times, uses --resume to keep context | | No output for 10 min | Sends an alert with the last 30 lines | | Auth prompt / merge conflict / y-n question | Sends an alert right away | | Task finishes | Sends a success ping |

Works with Claude, Codex, and Gemini

Each agent uses its own native resume so you don't lose context on a long task.

| | Claude Code | Codex CLI | Gemini CLI | |---|---|---|---| | Rate-limit detection | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | | Resumes same session | ✅ --resume SESSION_ID | ✅ exec resume SESSION_ID | ✅ --resume SESSION_ID | | Parses exact wait time | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | | Auto-injects JSON output | ✅ --output-format stream-json | ✅ --json | ✅ --output-format stream-json |

How overnight compares

| Feature | claude-auto-retry | autoclaude | overnight | |---|---|---|---| | Rate-limit recovery | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | | Checkpoint before pause | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | | Crash recovery + resume | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | | Hang detection | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | | Human-needed alerts | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | | Telegram / Slack | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | | Windows support | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | | npm install | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | | No tmux required | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |

How it works

overnight spawns your agent as a child process and pipes the output through normally. In the background it:

1. Injects --output-format stream-json (or the equivalent for each agent) so it can read the session ID from the output
2. Watches for rate-limit messages using patterns sourced from each agent's actual error strings
3. On rate limit: saves the last 30 lines as a checkpoint, waits until the exact reset time, then runs claude --resume SESSION_ID (or the Codex / Gemini equivalent) to continue the same session
4. On crash: backs off and restarts, reusing --resume if a session ID was captured
5. On silence: monitors for auth prompts, merge conflicts, and other patterns that mean the agent is stuck

Telegram setup (5 steps)

overnight setup --telegram

1. Message @BotFather on Telegram, send /newbot, copy the token
2. Paste the token into the wizard
3. Send any message to your new bot
4. overnight captures your chat ID automatically
5. Test message sent

Commands

overnight run -- <command> [args]   # Watch any agent command
overnight setup --telegram          # Set up Telegram
overnight setup --slack             # Set up Slack
overnight status                    # Show config and recent events
overnight log                       # Full event history
overnight log --tail 20             # Last 20 events
overnight log --type rate_limit     # Filter by event type
overnight checkpoint list           # List saved checkpoints
overnight checkpoint show           # Show the latest checkpoint
overnight uninstall                 # Remove config and hooks

Flags for overnight run

overnight run -v -- claude ...              # Verbose: shows session ID and resume command
overnight run --hang-timeout 30 -- ...      # Alert if no output for 30 seconds (good for testing)

Claude Code status bar hook

overnight setup can install a hook into ~/.claude/settings.json:

{ "statusLine": "~/.overnight/hook.js" }

This makes overnight read the exact rate-limit reset time from Claude's structured data instead of parsing text. It also shows context usage in Claude's status bar: 🌙 overnight | ctx: 73%

Windows

Works on Windows PowerShell and Command Prompt without any extra setup. No tmux, no WSL, no admin rights needed.

Contributing

Node.js 18+, TypeScript, no native modules.

git clone https://github.com/volkthienpreecha/agent-watch
cd agent-watch
npm install
npm run build
node dist/cli.js run -- echo "test"

To test specific features:

node test/verify-resume-args.js                                    # Unit tests for resume logic
node dist/cli.js run -- node test/simulate-crash-then-complete.js  # Crash recovery
node dist/cli.js run --hang-timeout 5 -- node test/simulate-hang.js  # Hang detection
node dist/cli.js run -- node test/simulate-codex-rate-limit.js     # Codex rate limit
node dist/cli.js run -- node test/simulate-gemini-rate-limit.js    # Gemini rate limit

License

MIT