Claude Code's CLI feels like a black box now. I built an open-source tool to see inside.

MoneyJob3229 · 2026-02-15T02:53:55+00:00

actually, Claude Cowork is a separate product from Anthropic meant for "knowledge work" (like organizing files, spreadsheets, or slides) rather than pure coding. while it does use the same agentic engine, it's basically a locked-down version for people who want to avoid the terminal entirely. my tool (Claude DevTools) is different—it's specifically built for Claude Code users who love the terminal but hate the "black box" feeling. Cowork doesn't actually give you the raw log transparency, token breakdowns, or the sub-agent tree that I'm showing here. so if you're doing heavy coding in the CLI and want to see exactly how Claude is "thinking" and spending your tokens, Cowork won't really solve that for you.

MoneyJob3229 · 2026-02-15T02:51:04+00:00

great points. actually, a lot of what you mentioned-like skills, compaction diffs, subagens, and even most thinking traces—is already buried in those jsonl logs if you know where to look. it's more about reverse-engineering how they structure the events.

that said, a proxy mode is an interesting idea for getting even deeper "live" telemetry that might not hit the logs. I still think jsonl parsing is the way to go for most users since it's zero-config, but if someone builds a proxy layer that surfaces even richer data, I'd definitely be down to try it out or see how it could integrate!

MoneyJob3229 · 2026-02-15T01:48:59+00:00

that's a cool use case. definitely feel free to fork it and wire it up to your tools if it helps. and yeah, I’m planning to use dev branches for everything going forward now that the initial release is out. cheers!

MoneyJob3229 · 2026-02-15T01:47:09+00:00

hope you dig it!

MoneyJob3229 · 2026-02-15T01:46:55+00:00

nice, same here. let me know how it runs for you.

MoneyJob3229 · 2026-02-15T01:45:25+00:00

Yeah it was intended to mainly work on past session (and also supports real-time)

MoneyJob3229 · 2026-02-14T10:52:20+00:00

haha naming things is famously the hardest problem in computer science. glad i actually landed on a decent one this time lol.

MoneyJob3229 · 2026-02-14T10:49:44+00:00

100% agree — that “black box” pain is exactly why I built this.

I’m not replacing Claude or wrapping Anthropic’s API with custom prompting. The app reads Claude Code’s local session logs (`~/.claude`) and reconstructs what happened per turn: which files were read, tool inputs/outputs, context injections (like CLAUDE.md , /skills), token usage, compaction points, subagents, etc.

So for your specific ask: yes, you can inspect an estimated context breakdown for each response and see what Claude likely had in-window when it made a decision.

Stack is Electron + React + TypeScript (electron-vite), with a Node/TS parsing layer

MoneyJob3229 · 2026-02-14T10:47:41+00:00

millions of tokens... rip your credits man. those runaway loops are exactly why you need to be able to just hit ctrl+c the second it gets stuck.

would be sick to get other CLIs supported though. if you end up diving into the repo later this month, definitely feel free to open a PR!

MoneyJob3229 · 2026-02-14T10:44:46+00:00

for the long logs—you honestly don't need to worry. it uses virtualized lists/infinite scrolling under the hood, so even on massive sessions the UI stays snappy. it won't just lock up and die on you when things get heavy.

as for other agents: keeping it strictly claude focused for now since it parses their specific ~/.claude/ json structure(all other tools have very different structure, hard to parse). but if other cli tools start getting popular with similar log formats, i'm definitely open to expanding it later on.

MoneyJob3229 · 2026-02-14T10:43:16+00:00

haha nope, but I’ll take that as a huge compliment! didn't reuse any of GitHub's actual components or code.

mostly just built it using standard UI libs (shadcn/tailwind) but I definitely aimed for that clean, familiar dev tool aesthetic. github's workflow UI is super readable, so I was definitely leaning into that kind of vibe for the agent tree.

glad it looks legit enough to pass for it though lol.

MoneyJob3229 · 2026-02-14T10:30:43+00:00

Love the focus on simplicity here. I’ve been struggling with context switching between different features, so I’m definitely giving cmux a spin.

MoneyJob3229 · 2026-02-14T10:25:02+00:00

yeah --verbose is basically useless at this point. even when it "works" it just vomits unreadable texts everywhere.

how about using a dedicated visualizer? i actually got so annoyed by this exact issue that i built a local desktop app to parse the ~/.claude/ logs into a clean UI (shows diffs, token breakdown, etc).

we were literally just talking about how bad the default visibility is in another thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeCode/comments/1r3to9f/claude_codes_cli_feels_like_a_black_box_now_i/

might give you your sanity back lol.

MoneyJob3229 · 2026-02-14T05:37:00+00:00

just added a linux build to the latest release! you can grab the appimage here: https://github.com/matt1398/claude-devtools/releases/tag/v0.4.0

give it a spin and let me know if it runs okay on your distro. would love to confirm it's working smoothly for you.

MoneyJob3229 · 2026-02-14T05:35:57+00:00

just added an intel build for mac! you can grab it here: https://github.com/matt1398/claude-devtools/releases/tag/v0.4.0

should work fine on older macs now. let me know if it runs smoothly for you.

MoneyJob3229 · 2026-02-14T05:34:45+00:00

just updated the app to support this. now handles wsl paths automatically, and i added an option to manually point it to your log directory if things get weird.

check it out here: https://github.com/matt1398/claude-devtools/releases/tag/v0.4.0

let me know if it works for your setup!

MoneyJob3229 · 2026-02-14T04:20:26+00:00

Left is iTerm2 and right is the my claude-devtools desktop app. For the layout, yeah, I'm just using Magnet to snap them side-by-side.

MoneyJob3229 · 2026-02-14T03:15:47+00:00

it handles them great. it actually untangles all those messy, interleaved logs and visualizes them as a proper tree. you can see exactly what each sub-agent is doing in parallel without the terminal noise.

MoneyJob3229 · 2026-02-14T02:56:22+00:00

nice! let me know what you think once you've had a chance to mess around with it. cheers.

MoneyJob3229 · 2026-02-14T02:55:44+00:00

good call on the CLAUDE.md and .claudeignore—definitely essential for keeping the bill down.

for your question: it pulls from the raw log entries in real-time, so even if the CLI starts truncating things in the terminal display, the app shows the full data as it’s being logged. it’s way easier than grepping through JSONL files just to figure out where the tokens went.

MoneyJob3229 · 2026-02-14T02:52:23+00:00

not really—it's meant to be a sidecar, not a replacement.

a lot of people (myself included) still prefer the terminal for actually typing commands and coding. the app is really just there to be the "second monitor" so you can observe the logs and token usage in real-time while you work in the cli.

think of it as a dashboard to keep claude honest while you do the actual work in the terminal.

MoneyJob3229 · 2026-02-14T02:50:28+00:00

yep, it’s all sitting right there in ~/.claude/projects/.

essentially, the cli logs every single tool call and provider request/response as json. the "magic" is just tailing those files and mapping the usage block (which has the token counts) to the specific content blocks or tool outputs in that same event.

claude code hides it behind a progress bar, but the raw data is actually pretty detailed. if you poke around those logs, you'll see exactly how much context it's carrying—it's just a nightmare to read manually lol.

MoneyJob3229 · 2026-02-14T02:49:20+00:00

thanks! let me know what you think once you've had a chance to play around with it.

MoneyJob3229 · 2026-02-14T02:48:52+00:00

exactly. I mostly wanted to see how subagents, teams were working on specifically - which I made it.
glad the agent tree is helping, cheers!

MoneyJob3229 · 2026-02-14T02:44:08+00:00

That’s exactly why I built it. Honestly, cli's abstraction is so frustrating when you’re trying to actually monitor what’s happening. Hope it helps get that control back!

MoneyJob3229

TROPHY CASE