A watch-only attention layer for Claude Code sessions. One terminal shows every active session across your machine, with live status, native Claude Code labels/colors, desktop alerts, and short recaps when Claude writes them.

go install github.com/elesiann/cc-cockpit/cmd/cc-cockpit@latest
cc-cockpit install
cc-cockpit watch

Then start Claude normally in any other terminal:

cd ~/work/api
claude

With the hooks installed, the session appears in cc-cockpit watch within one tick. cc-cockpit does not launch Claude, create branches, or touch your repos. It reads Claude Code hook events and renders the state. The one action it can take is an opt-in convenience: on WSL + Windows Terminal it can bring a selected session's window to the foreground (see Jump to a session).

Claude Code made it cheap to run several coding sessions at once. The bottleneck moved from compute to attention: you need to know which session is working, which one is waiting for input, and what happened while you were away.

cc-cockpit lives above the agent layer. It does not dispatch agents, isolate file edits, manage worktrees, or open pull requests. It watches the sessions you already started and gives you one place to scan them.

• Observation, not orchestration. cc-cockpit reads hook events; it never starts Claude, edits files, or manages worktrees. The sole exception is an opt-in convenience on WSL + Windows Terminal: raising a selected session's window to the foreground.
• Your repos stay untouched. No worktrees, no auto-branches, no generated project files.
• No daemon. Just Claude Code hooks, an append-only event log, and a terminal dashboard.
• Composable. Use vanilla claude, background agents, or any workflow that emits Claude Code hook events.

Actual renders include full task labels, activity timers, /rename names, /color row coloring, compact tool/failure hints, native recaps when available, subagent rollups, and an ended footer.

• Linux, macOS, or WSL2.
• Claude Code 2.1+ with the hook event model: SessionStart, UserPromptSubmit, PermissionRequest, Notification, PreToolUse, PostToolUse, PostToolUseFailure, PostToolBatch, Stop, StopFailure, SessionEnd.
• Go 1.25+ if building from source.

There are two ways to get the binary onto your PATH. After either one, run cc-cockpit install once to register the Claude Code hooks.

# Option A: build from source
go install github.com/elesiann/cc-cockpit/cmd/cc-cockpit@latest

# Option B: download a release binary (Linux + macOS, amd64 + arm64).
# Replace VERSION with the release tag (e.g. 1.0.0) and OS_ARCH with one of
# linux_amd64, linux_arm64, darwin_amd64, darwin_arm64.
VERSION=1.0.0 OS_ARCH=linux_amd64 \
  curl -L "https://github.com/elesiann/cc-cockpit/releases/download/v${VERSION}/cc-cockpit_${VERSION}_${OS_ARCH}.tar.gz" \
  | tar -xz -C ~/.local/bin/ cc-cockpit

# Then install hooks
cc-cockpit install

cc-cockpit install symlinks the binary into ~/.local/bin/, backs up ~/.claude/settings.json if it would change, and merges the cc-cockpit hook entries. Re-run it any time without duplicating hooks.

Useful flags: --bin-dir DIR, --settings FILE, --no-bin, --no-hooks.

To remove everything cc-cockpit installed, run cc-cockpit uninstall (see Uninstall).

The Notification hook uses matcher: "idle_prompt|permission_prompt", which is the signal that Claude is waiting on you.

cc-cockpit watch                 # every workspace
cc-cockpit watch --ws api,web    # only these workspaces
cc-cockpit watch --sort attention

watch opens a read-only dashboard in the current terminal. It scans all state dirs under ~/.local/state/cc-cockpit/*/events.jsonl or $XDG_STATE_HOME/cc-cockpit/*/events.jsonl, then renders one row per non-ended session. The --ws flag accepts a comma-separated list (or repeated --ws=<name>) and restricts the view to those workspace names — useful when one project is noisy and you want to focus on another. The --sort flag accepts started (default), activity, or attention; attention places waiting sessions first, then stale mid-turn sessions, then active work, then idle rows.

The first time you run watch on a fresh machine you'll see an (install) cc-cockpit install in another terminal hint instead of an empty table — once hooks are installed and you start claude, the first row appears within one tick.

Sessions are routed by cwd:

• If the cwd is inside a directory with .cc-cockpit/workspace.json, the session lands in that workspace's state dir.
• Otherwise, the session lands in _global.

You do not need a workspace to use cc-cockpit. Workspaces are only for stable names and repo labels.

watch is designed to reduce interpretation work:

• Granular status: running, thinking, processing, waiting, completed, and idle, with compact glyphs.
• Native names and colors: Claude Code /rename changes the TASK column; /color <name> colors the row.
• Tool and failure hints: completed tool calls roll up as a dim ↳ tools: line, and recent tool/turn failures appear as ↳ failures:.
• Native recaps: Claude Code away_summary text appears as a dim ↳ recap: line when the session is idle.
• Subagent rollups: sidechain/subagent transcripts appear as a compact ↳ agents: line below the parent session.
• Stale flag: mid-turn sessions with no events for 15 minutes render with ?.
• Desktop notifications: waiting sessions call wsl-notify-send.exe, notify-send, or osascript when available.
• Clean exit: Ctrl-C restores the terminal.

When you run watch under WSL inside Windows Terminal, the dashboard is interactive: use ↑/↓ (or j/k) to select a session and press Enter to bring that session's terminal window to the foreground. q quits.

This is the one place cc-cockpit reaches outside its own window. It works by:

• binding each session to its window at SessionStart: the session's tab is the focused UI element right after claude launches, so Windows UI Automation resolves the owning Windows Terminal window and tab — without writing anything to the terminal. The window+tab is cached under the workspace state dir.
• raising that window (and selecting its tab) on demand via Windows UI Automation.

Outside WSL + Windows Terminal the selector is disabled and watch stays render-only. Only sessions started after installing this version can be focused — older sessions were never bound.

A workspace is a directory with .cc-cockpit/workspace.json.

cc-cockpit init --name my-workspace api=packages/api web=packages/web

The name field chooses the runtime state directory. Repo labels are optional validation/documentation metadata; rows still fall back to the hook payload cwd when Claude does not provide an explicit repo label.

If you skip init, sessions still show up under _global.

end and reap only change cc-cockpit dashboard state. They do not close terminals or kill Claude processes. A later real event from the same synthetic-ended session brings it back.

1. cc-cockpit install adds Claude Code hook commands to ~/.claude/settings.json.
2. Claude Code invokes cc-cockpit hook <Event> for each subscribed event.
3. The hook resolver maps the event to a state dir using the payload cwd and optional workspace config.
4. state.Append writes one JSONL line to events.jsonl with a monotonic seq.
5. watch snapshots each log under a shared lock, reduces the events, loads Claude display metadata and recaps, renders the table, and rings the bell for new attention events.

No sessions appear: run cc-cockpit install, then start a new Claude session. Existing sessions that started before hook installation may not emit the startup events cc-cockpit needs.

Everything appears under _global: that is expected without .cc-cockpit/workspace.json. Run cc-cockpit init --name <name> at a workspace root if you want named grouping.

Rows do not disappear: use /quit in Claude when possible. For stale dashboard rows, use cc-cockpit end <sid-prefix> or cc-cockpit reap --older-than 1h --yes.

Desktop notifications do not fire: cc-cockpit only uses a notifier if wsl-notify-send.exe, notify-send, or osascript is on PATH.

cc-cockpit uninstall

This removes only cc-cockpit's footprint:

• Hook entries that carry a cc-cockpit hook <Event> command, from ~/.claude/settings.json. Every other tool's hooks and every top-level key (theme, permissions, …) are preserved. A timestamped backup is written next to the settings file before changes.
• The ~/.local/bin/cc-cockpit symlink (or --bin-dir <DIR>/cc-cockpit). Refuses to delete a regular file there — that might be a manually-built binary, not a symlink cc-cockpit owns.

Per-workspace event logs under ~/.local/state/cc-cockpit/ (or $XDG_STATE_HOME/cc-cockpit/) are intentionally left in place. To clear them too:

rm -rf ~/.local/state/cc-cockpit   # or $XDG_STATE_HOME/cc-cockpit

uninstall accepts the same flags as install: --bin-dir, --settings, --no-bin, --no-hooks. Running it twice is a clean no-op.

Stable, single-author project. If you try it and it breaks, open an issue with the event log (events.jsonl) attached. PRs welcome; open a discussion issue first so we can align on scope.