Claude Replay

The observability layer for Claude Code sessions — search, analytics, and visualization across every project.

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Claude Code's --resume/--continue and /rewind recover the session you're in. Claude Replay does the part they don't: it hooks passively into every session, records what happened to a local SQLite store, and makes every past session — across every project — searchable, comparable, measurable, and exportable. Full-text search, per-session insight metrics, death-cause classification (why a session ended), session diffing, a web dashboard, and a terminal UI — none of which Claude Code has natively.

Claude Code session
        |
   hooks (PreToolUse · PostToolUse · Stop)
        |
        v
   ~/.claude-replay/sessions.db   ← events + checkpoints
        |
   +----+--------------------+
   |          |              |
 MCP tools  Dashboard      TUI
 (resume)   :8766          (browse)

Passive hooks write. MCP tools, the web dashboard, and the terminal UI read. Nothing leaves your machine.

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How this complements native Claude Code

Claude Replay is additive — it layers on top of the built-ins, it doesn't replace them.

You want to…	Use
Resume / continue the current session	Native claude --continue, --resume
Undo file + conversation changes in a session	Native /rewind
Search every past session by content, tool, or outcome	Replay search
See why a session ended + per-session metrics	Replay status / replay_insights
Compare two runs side by side	Replay diff
Visualize a session timeline / browse all projects	Replay dashboard + TUI
Export a session as HTML / JSON / Markdown	Replay export --format

Think of native resume/rewind as recovery, and Replay as observability over your whole history.

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Architecture

Passive hooks write to SQLite. MCP tools read from SQLite. Dashboard + TUI visualize SQLite. That's the whole system.

Layer	File	Role
Store	claude_replay/store.py	All DB access — sessions, events, checkpoints
Hooks	claude_replay/hooks.py	Record tool calls + auto-checkpoint, dispatched by claude-replay hook <type>
Recovery	claude_replay/resume.py	Generate a resume brief from a session
Export	claude_replay/export.py	Render a session as a self-contained HTML trace
Server	claude_replay/server.py	Starlette app — MCP SSE + JSON API + static dashboard
TUI	claude_replay/tui.py + tui_client.py	Textual session browser over the JSON API
CLI	claude_replay/cli.py	Every subcommand

Port 8766 deliberately one above Claude Bridge's 8765, so the two siblings can run side by side without colliding.

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Quickstart

1. Install

pip install claude-replay

Or from a clone if you'd like to hack on it:

git clone https://github.com/constripacity/Claude-Replay.git
cd Claude-Replay
pip install -e .[dev]              # editable install with test/lint deps
pip install -e .[tui]             # add the terminal UI deps (textual, httpx)

If pip install -e fails on your environment (a known hatchling editable-install quirk on some setups), install the deps directly instead: pip install mcp starlette uvicorn anyio textual httpx.

2. Install the hooks

This wires Replay into Claude Code by merging three hooks into ~/.claude/settings.json. It's idempotent and leaves any other tools' hooks untouched.

claude-replay install

✓ Installed Claude Replay hooks into ~/.claude/settings.json
  PreToolUse  → claude-replay hook pre-tool
  PostToolUse → claude-replay hook post-tool
  Stop        → claude-replay hook stop

From now on, every Claude Code session is recorded automatically. Remove the hooks any time with claude-replay uninstall (it removes only Replay's hooks).

Confirm it's actually wired up — the one check that matters:

claude-replay doctor

Claude Replay — doctor

  ✓ Hooks installed: PreToolUse / PostToolUse / Stop are in settings.json
  ✓ Hook command on PATH: claude-replay → …/claude-replay
  ✓ Database: ~/.claude-replay/sessions.db
  ✓ Sessions recorded: 3 sessions; most recent 5m ago

All good — Replay is installed and recording. ✓

If doctor warns that claude-replay isn't on PATH, the hooks can't run and nothing is recorded — put your install directory on PATH and re-run it.

3. Start the server (dashboard + MCP tools)

claude-replay serve                 # defaults: 127.0.0.1:8766
claude-replay serve --port 9000     # custom port
claude-replay serve --host 0.0.0.0  # bind all interfaces

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
  Claude Replay — Session checkpoint & recovery server
  Version: 0.3.0
  DB: ~/.claude-replay/sessions.db
  http://localhost:8766/             ← Dashboard
  http://localhost:8766/sse          ← MCP config
  http://localhost:8766/api/state    ← JSON state
  http://localhost:8766/status       ← Health check
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

4. (Optional) Register the MCP tools with Claude Code

So a running Claude Code session can call replay_resume, replay_checkpoint, etc. directly. Two ways:

SSE (alongside the dashboard — needs claude-replay serve running):

claude mcp add --transport sse -s user claude-replay http://localhost:8766/sse

stdio (no server process — the client launches Replay on demand):

claude mcp add -s user claude-replay -- claude-replay mcp
# or, without installing: uvx claude-replay mcp

Verify with claude mcp list claude-replay should show ✓ Connected. Inside an already-running session, type /mcp to re-handshake.

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When a session dies

# What's the state of the last session?
claude-replay status

# Print a paste-ready resume brief (most recent session, or pass an id)
claude-replay resume
claude-replay resume <session-id>

# Browse every recorded session in the terminal
claude-replay tui                   # needs `claude-replay serve` running

# Export a session as a self-contained HTML trace
claude-replay export                # → ~/.claude-replay/exports/<id>.html

Paste the resume output into a fresh Claude Code session and it picks up where the dead one left off objective, what was done, what's next, and which files were touched.

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MCP Tools

Every connected Claude Code session gets these ten tools:

Tool	Description
replay_status	Current session summary objective, status, how it ended, event/checkpoint counts, last activity
replay_checkpoint	Force a checkpoint of the current session now, with an optional note
replay_resume	Generate a structured resume brief for a session (default: most recent)
replay_sessions	List recent sessions with status, model, duration, checkpoint count
replay_insights	Per-session metrics: how it ended, duration, tool calls, error rate, files touched, top tools
replay_stats	Cross-session analytics: tool calls, error rate, why sessions end, tool mix, per-project rollups
replay_search	Full-text search across sessions with filters (tool, cause, date, project), ranked by match count
replay_diff	Compare two sessions: metric deltas + which files each touched
replay_tag	Name a session and add/remove tags for later retrieval
replay_export	Render a session as a self-contained trace (html / json / md) and return the path

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CLI Reference

Command	What it does
claude-replay install	Merge Replay's hooks into ~/.claude/settings.json (idempotent)
claude-replay uninstall	Remove only Replay's hooks
claude-replay status	Current/last session at a glance, with insight metrics
claude-replay sessions [--limit N]	List recent sessions (with names + tags)
claude-replay search <query> [--tool T] [--cause C] [--since 7d] [--project P]	Full-text search with filters (omit query to browse by filter)
claude-replay diff <session-a> <session-b>	Compare two sessions side by side
claude-replay resume [session_id]	Print a resume brief (default: most recent)
claude-replay export [session_id] [--output DIR] [--format html|json|md]	Render a trace
claude-replay tag [session_id] [--name N] [--add a,b] [--remove c] [--clear]	Name or tag a session
claude-replay prune [--older-than 30d] [--yes]	Delete sessions with no recent activity (destructive)
claude-replay serve [--host H] [--port P]	Start the MCP + dashboard server (port 8766)
claude-replay mcp	Serve the MCP tools over stdio (for uvx claude-replay mcp / MCP clients)
claude-replay tui [--url URL]	Launch the terminal session browser
claude-replay reset [--yes]	Delete all recorded sessions (destructive)
claude-replay hook <pre-tool|post-tool|stop>	Internal — invoked by Claude Code's hooks

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Dashboard & TUI

Web dashboard (claude-replay serve, then open http://localhost:8766/) a vanilla-JS view that polls every 2 s: session list (with how-it-ended badge + tags), a live search box, per-session timeline, and one-click "Copy Resume Brief" / "Export HTML". No CDN, no build step.

Terminal UI (claude-replay tui) a Textual browser in the same dark theme. A session sidebar, a live event feed, and a detail inspector showing how the session ended, its tags, the latest checkpoint, and files touched. Keys:

↑↓ navigate   Tab switch panel   Space pause
r  resume (copies the brief to your clipboard)
e  export HTML trace
?  help        q quit

The TUI talks to the server over HTTP start claude-replay serve first (defaults to http://127.0.0.1:8766; point elsewhere with --url).

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Configuration

Env var	Default	Purpose
CLAUDE_REPLAY_DB	~/.claude-replay/sessions.db	SQLite store location
CLAUDE_SESSION_ID / CLAUDE_CODE_SESSION_ID	—	Session identity (Claude Code sets this in the hook payload); falls back to these env vars, then to a hash of the project dir
CLAUDE_REPLAY_CORS_ORIGIN	localhost only	Comma-separated extra CORS origins for the server
CLAUDE_REPLAY_NO_DASHBOARD	—	Set to disable the static dashboard mount (MCP/JSON only)

The hook path is offline-first by design: it makes no network calls and completes in well under 50 ms just the one SQLite write. Large tool payloads are truncated at 8 KB per event so the DB stays lean.

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Development

pip install -e .[dev]               # or install deps directly (see install note)
python -m pytest                    # full suite
ruff check .

Tests use an isolated tmp_path SQLite database (the fresh_db fixture) — they never touch your real ~/.claude-replay/sessions.db. See CONTRIBUTING.md for the scope and the coding rules.

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License

MIT see LICENSE.

Sibling to Claude Bridge. Built under the Constripacity banner.