A local web UI for inspecting what's actually inside Claude Code's context window — conversation content, agent thinking process, tool call decisions, and compaction summaries.
- Context Composition — visual breakdown of what's in context: user text vs thinking blocks vs tool inputs vs tool results vs compaction summaries
- Tool Usage Profile — which tools Claude called, how often, with full input/output inspection
- Thinking Blocks — expand any assistant message to read Claude's internal reasoning before it acts
- Compaction Summaries — highlighted
📝 SUMMARYblocks showing exactly what survived context compaction - Sidechain / Sub-agent — dimmed messages from Task-tool sub-agents, separate from main conversation
- Content Search — full-text search across all message content, thinking, tool I/O
- Filters — toggle visibility by message type (user / assistant / system / summary / sidechain)
Reads Claude Code's JSONL transcript files directly:
~/.claude/projects/<project-name>/<session-id>.jsonl
Each line contains a typed message (user, assistant, system, summary) with content blocks:
text— plain text contentthinking— Claude's chain-of-thought reasoningtool_use— tool name + input params (Read, Write, Bash, Grep, etc.)tool_result— output from tool executionsummary— compaction summary preserving session state
npx claude-context-inspector
# → http://localhost:3456Or install globally:
npm i -g claude-context-inspector
ccinspectorRun the inspector as a background service instead of blocking your terminal:
ccinspector start # start as background daemon
ccinspector start -p 8080 # start on a custom port
ccinspector status # check if daemon is running
ccinspector stop # stop the daemonLogs are written to ~/.claude-context-inspector/daemon.log. The PID file is stored at ~/.claude-context-inspector/daemon.pid.
Running ccinspector with no arguments still starts in the foreground as before.
git clone https://github.com/johnsonlee/claude-context-inspector.git
cd claude-context-inspector
npm install
npm run dev
# → http://localhost:5173 (proxies API to :3456)| Env Variable | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
PORT |
3456 |
Server port |
CLAUDE_DIR |
~/.claude |
Claude Code data directory |
- Backend: Node.js + Express (reads JSONL, serves structured API)
- Frontend: React 18 + Recharts (CDN-loaded, zero build step)
- Styling: Dark inspector theme, JetBrains Mono
MIT