Claude Code Session

A VS Code sidebar extension that monitors your Claude Code CLI sessions in real time — with an animated pixel-art robot companion, live activity tracking, usage meters, a token-rate chart, and a full project dashboard.

The sidebar inherits whatever VS Code theme you have active, so it always matches your editor.

What you get

Sticky header — project + robot status bar

The top of the sidebar shows your current workspace name and file path, plus a sticky robot status bar: a pixel-art robot that animates based on what Claude is doing (thinking, reading, editing, running, searching, delegating…) next to a live speech bubble showing the current action (e.g. “Editing panel.ts”). Different tools map to different robot animations — destructive actions even zap him.

Sessions

Your current active Claude Code session, rendered as a card with:

• undefinedActivity badge — color-coded, pulsating status (Thinking / Working / Responding / Waiting / Idle)
• undefinedGradient border ring — a neon border glow that changes color based on the activity state
• undefinedModel, current file, permission mode, entrypoint (VS Code / CLI / Desktop), turn count, tool countundefined
• undefinedInput / output token counters — per-turn and cumulative
• undefinedContext meter — a visual progress bar of context-window usage that shifts from green → yellow → red
• undefined“YOUR TURN” badge when Claude is waiting for you
• undefinedStarted at / elapsed duration ticker that updates every second
• undefined+ button to spin up a new session

Click the card to jump to or resume that session’s terminal.

Usage

Two pacing meters showing your Claude plan’s consumption:

• undefinedSession (resets every 5 hours) — how much of the current window you’ve burned
• undefinedThis week (resets every 7 days) — weekly budget

Each bar has a time-elapsed marker that shows how far through the window you are, and the fill color is pace-based: green when you’re under-pacing, yellow on-pace, orange/red when you’re burning faster than the clock. Includes reset countdown and an EXTRA USAGE badge when you cross into overage territory. Reads live data from your Claude credentials.

Token Activity

A compact bar chart of tokens spent over time, with:

• undefinedVertical-gradient bars — green at low usage, warming to yellow/orange/red at the peaks
• undefinedConnect-the-tops line + dot markers — showing the trend across buckets
• undefinedY-axis ticks auto-rounded to nice numbers (1k / 2k / 5k…)
• undefinedTime-window stepper — [<] 5h [>] with arrows to cycle through 5m / 15m / 30m / 1h / 5h / 12h / 24h, or click the label for a dropdown
• undefinedTotal tokens + message count in the header

Git Status

Everything about the current repo at a glance:

• Repo name (clickable → opens on GitHub), branch, uncommitted count, ahead/behind arrows
• Last commit message + timestamp, total commits, contributors, branch count, tags, stashes
• When the remote is a GitHub repo: visibility (public/private), stars, forks, open issues, open PRs, last-pushed, created date, disk size

Recent Files

Files Claude has touched in this session, click-to-open. Updates as Claude reads/writes.

Session History

A rolling list of your recent Claude sessions with titles and “last seen” timestamps, so you can quickly jump back into past work.

MCP Servers

Every MCP server currently connected to your Claude setup, with status dots.

Skills

A searchable, filterable browser of every Claude Code skill installed on your machine:

• undefinedSearch box to filter by name or description
• undefinedSource filter — USER vs PLUGIN
• undefinedCategory chips — Planning, Design, Review, Testing, SEO & Content, Automation, Integrations, Dev Tools, Other
• Click any skill to inject /<skill-name> into your Claude prompt

CLI Tools

Grouped list of developer CLIs the extension detects on your system (Claude, Node/package managers, Git, cloud tools, etc.). Click an installed one to drop its name into the prompt.

Layout controls

Every section can be:

• undefinedCollapsed by clicking its header (chevron rotates; per-section hover color — blue for Sessions, amber for Usage, emerald for Token Activity, and so on)
• undefinedPinned to the top with the pushpin icon — pinned sections stick under the header while you scroll
• undefinedReordered by drag-and-drop

State persists across reloads.

Install

From VSIX

Download the .vsix from Releases, then:

code --install-extension claude-code-session-<version>.vsix

From source

git clone https://github.com/madeby10am/claude-code-session.git
cd claude-code-session
npm install
npm run compile

Then either press F5 in VS Code to launch an Extension Development Host, or use npm run deploy to copy the built files into your installed extension folder and reload the window.

Usage

1. Open the Claude Code Session sidebar (robot icon in the activity bar)
2. Start a Claude Code session in your terminal (claude) or the VS Code extension
3. Watch the sidebar update in real time

undefinedKeyboard shortcut: Cmd+Shift+J (macOS) / Ctrl+Shift+J (Windows/Linux) opens the session panel as a split editor.

How it works

The extension watches ~/.claude/projects/ for JSONL session log files and parses them for:

• Session metadata (model, mode, entrypoint)
• Token usage (input, output, cache-aware)
• Activity state (idle, thinking, tooling, responding, sleeping)
• Tool usage (file reads, edits, bash commands, searches)
• Context-window utilization

All rendering happens in an inline webview with zero runtime dependencies.

Requirements

• VS Code 1.85+
• Claude Code CLI installed and used at least once (creates ~/.claude/projects/)

Development

npm run compile    # Build once
npm run watch      # Watch mode
npm test           # Run tests
npm run deploy     # Build + copy to installed extension (then reload VS Code)

License

MIT