Cloister
A local web UI for browsing and monitoring your Claude Code conversation history.
Features
- Browse all your Claude Code sessions organized by project
- Live monitoring - Watch active sessions update in real-time via SSE
- Session status - See which sessions are working, awaiting input, or idle
- Keyboard navigation - Navigate with arrow keys, j/k, Enter, and Escape
- Lazy loading - Efficiently handles large sessions with 100+ messages
- Dark theme with GitHub Dark color scheme
Usage
Run Cloister directly without installing:
Then open http://localhost:3333 in your browser.
Options
npx cloister --port 8080 # Use a different port npx cloister --help # Show all options
How It Works
Cloister reads session files directly from ~/.claude/projects/ - no database required. It watches for changes and streams updates to your browser, so you can monitor active Claude Code sessions as they happen.
Development
If you want to contribute to Cloister or run it from source:
# Clone the repository git clone https://github.com/bradleyboy/cloister.git cd cloister # Install dependencies npm install # Start development server with hot reload (localhost:3333) npm run dev # Or start production server npm run start
Contributing
This project uses Claude-driven development. Instead of traditional issue tracking, we use a task specification system:
Task System
Tasks live in .claude-tasks/ as markdown files with a simple format:
--- title: Short descriptive title status: pending created: 2025-01-25 --- ## Problem / Goal What needs to be done. ## Acceptance Criteria - [ ] Specific testable outcome
Creating a Task
Use the /task command in Claude Code to create a new task:
/task fix the SSE reconnection bug /task add search functionality across sessions
This automatically creates a properly formatted task file in .claude-tasks/ with your description.
Running Tasks
Use the autonomous task runner to have Claude complete tasks:
Or directly:
This runs Claude in a loop, picking up pending tasks, completing them, and updating the work log until all tasks are done.
You can also run tasks manually with Claude Code:
claude "Work on the next pending task in .claude-tasks/"Technical Details
See CLAUDE.md for architecture, code conventions, and implementation details.
Tech Stack
- Runtime: Node.js (18+)
- Server: Hono (TypeScript) with @hono/node-server
- Frontend: Vanilla HTML/CSS/JS (no build step)
License
MIT License
Copyright (c) 2025
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.