companion-capture: Tool saves Claude Code's ephemeral speech bubbles

What companion-capture does

If you use Claude Code in the terminal, you've probably noticed the companion character that pops up with speech bubbles while you work. These messages are ephemeral—the TUI redraws and they're gone. Some contain useful observations about your code, warnings about bugs, or funny commentary. companion-capture watches terminal output, extracts those bubble messages, and saves them to markdown files (and optionally SQLite for search).

How it works

• A shell wrapper launches Claude Code through script -q -F to capture raw terminal output
• A Python parser runs a VT100 screen buffer (not ANSI stripping—actual cursor position tracking) to figure out where text is actually rendered
• Messages require two consecutive scans before being written, so you don't get half-rendered garbage
• A PostToolUse hook surfaces new captures back to Claude mid-session, so it can actually see what the companion said

Features

• Zero runtime dependencies (stdlib Python only)
• Full-text search across captures (companion-capture search "auth bug")
• Privacy controls—exclude patterns, project blocklists, retroactive redaction
• Opt-in contextual recall that feeds recent captures back to Claude automatically
• companion-capture doctor for health checking the whole setup
• 400+ pytest cases

What the developer found using it

The companion actually catches things. It flagged a migration script that had no test coverage. It noticed a race condition in a multi-session setup. Most of the time it's vibes and reactions, but every few sessions it drops something genuinely worth reading back.

Current limitations

MacOS + Claude Code only for now. No external dependencies, MIT licensed.

GitHub: github.com/jaywadhwa/companion-capture