Codeman maintainer
fa4815b465
The viewer looked for a Claude transcript under ~/.claude/projects only, and for the conversation after a /clear in ~/.claude/history.jsonl only. A session started with its own CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR (a second account, #255), or any session on a server that exports one, writes both elsewhere, so the eye button showed "No response yet" or a terminal dump, and codeman agent read and the Discord bridge's last message came back empty. This is the third part of the report in issue 701; the other two are a design choice and a feature request. lastResponseFor() now asks claudeConversationDirs() for the folder the session's claude writes to: its own override, then the server's, then ~/.claude, through claudeProjectsDir(), which the relaunch pin and the Edit history panel already use. The rename's /resume title takes the same lookup when no hook has named the transcript yet. - Local sessions only. In a Docker case or on a remote host the override names a folder over there, and the same path on this host is someone else's. - A relocated folder is a path somebody chose, so it is probed bounded first (the rule from issue 516). Anything but a directory reads as no transcript, never as a reason to look under ~/.claude, where a file of the same name is another account's conversation. - The default folder is not probed, so that path is as before. Not changed: the resume pre-validation at session create and the host-wide history scans still read the default folder. Tests: five route cases for the viewer (own folder, the server's, no fallback, /clear through the relocated history, Docker left alone) and one for the rename. Each part of the change fails one of them when reverted. Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.2 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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Watching Agents Work
Modern agents fan out. A single Claude session can be running six subagents, and the parent terminal shows you almost none of it. Codeman surfaces that hidden work as live windows, panels, and after-the-fact summaries.
Everything on this page is Claude-only. It reads Claude Code's transcripts and team state; the other CLIs expose no equivalent.
Subagent windows
When a Claude session spawns subagents, each one gets its own floating window with a live transcript: what it was asked to do, what it is doing, and what it returned.
- Windows are draggable and resizable, and their positions persist across reloads.
- A connection line links each window to the session tab that spawned it, so with four sessions running you can still tell whose worker is whose.
- Closing a window does not stop the subagent. It only stops you watching it.
This is the feature that makes a fan-out legible. Without it, a lead session that spawned eight workers looks like a stalled terminal for several minutes.
Session lineage lines
The tab strip draws lines from every tab to the tabs it spawned. That covers the other direction of fan-out: not subagents inside one session, but whole sessions started by an agent through the API.
The lines form one tree per spawning tab, in that tab's colour, and run only through the gaps between tab rows, so they never cover a tab name or the terminal. Select a tab and its family (the tabs it spawned, or its parent and siblings) is drawn thicker and brighter. A dashed branch means that child is working.
Desktop only, on by default, and toggled in App Settings → Appearance. Lines are skipped for tabs scrolled out of view.
See Driving Codeman From An Agent for the spawning side.
Agent teams
Claude Code's experimental agent teams appear as teammates alongside subagents. Enable them in the CLI's own environment:
CLAUDE_CODE_EXPERIMENTAL_AGENT_TEAMS=1
and turn the per-case Agent Teams toggle on under Case settings… at the bottom of the case picker (the gear beside the case button on a phone).
Codeman watches the team directory and matches teammates to the session leading them. Teammates are in-process threads rather than separate CLI processes, so they show up as windows, not tabs.
Notes and the experiment log:
docs/agent-teams/.
Ultracode and workflow runs
When Claude runs a Workflow, dozens of agents can be in flight at once. The completion artifact for a run is only written at the end, so a live run would otherwise be invisible until it finished. Codeman synthesizes the in-flight view from the transcripts and lets the real artifact supersede it when it lands.
Two independent toggles, both off by default:
| Setting | Shows |
|---|---|
| Ultracode panel | A docked panel listing the run's agents. |
| Ultracode windows | Floating windows, like subagents. |
Turning on either starts the watcher.
Reading the answer, not the terminal
Last Response (header button, opt-in) renders the agent's last answer as scrollable text rather than terminal output. It exists mostly for phones, where reading a long answer in a terminal viewport is painful. More loads additional context. Copy Markdown copies the newest answer's raw Markdown, every part of its turn, so headings, lists and code fences paste intact (the same answer in both views; tool and status blocks are left out). Persian, Arabic and Hebrew answers read right to left here, which the terminal cannot do, while code and the file paths it links stay left to right.
After the fact
| Surface | Answers |
|---|---|
| Away Digest | What happened while I was gone? |
| Run summary | What did this run actually do? |
| Lifecycle log | When did sessions start, exit, or get killed, and why? |
| Token stats | What did it cost? |
The Away Digest aggregates the lifecycle log, run summary events, live sessions, token statistics, and recent subagents into one view. It is the right first thing to open in the morning after an overnight run.
All of these header buttons are opt-in: App Settings → Header & Panels.
Performance
The design target is 20 sessions and 50 agent windows at 60fps. If you routinely run more than that, expect the browser rather than the server to be the limit, and close windows you are not reading.
Gotchas
- A session pointed at a relocated Claude config directory goes blind here. Transcripts
written outside
~/.claude/projectsare invisible to the watchers, so subagent windows, the ultracode panel and Read My Mind stop working for that session. Symlinkprojectsback into the shared tree to fix it. The response viewer reads the session's own directory and keeps working. See Agent CLIs. - Closing a window does not cancel the agent. Nothing on this page controls agents; it observes them.
- Windows are opt-in for ultracode, automatic for subagents.
Read next
- The Dashboard - where these surfaces live.
- Driving Codeman From An Agent - the other kind of fan-out.
- Autonomous Loops - the loops that generate this much activity.