CTOP: Terminal UI to Monitor Claude Code Sessions, Zero Deps
CTOP is a terminal UI that lets you monitor all your running Claude Code and Codex sessions from a single pane. It's built with pure Node.js, has zero dependencies, makes no network calls, and works on macOS, Linux, and Windows.
What it shows per session
- CPU, memory, uptime, status
- Context window saturation bar (input / cache / output / free out of 200k)
- Token breakdown: input, output, cache creation, cache read
- Model, branch, session ID, service tier
- Cost estimates per session and aggregate
Other features
- Vim-style navigation (
hjkl,g/G) - Two view modes: list (table) and pane (card grid)
- Kill individual or all sessions (SIGTERM or SIGKILL)
- Sort by CPU, memory, context%; filter by branch/model/directory
- Live log tailing and full-text search across conversations
- Desktop notifications when sessions complete
- 5 color themes, plugin system
The author runs 6–15+ Claude and Codex sessions across different repos and built CTOP to track context burn, idle sessions, and memory usage. It pairs well with Agent View — Agent View handles dispatching and input needs, while CTOP fills in cost tracking, CPU/memory, context window bars, and historical stats.
Installation
npm i -g ctop-claudeOr via Homebrew:
brew tap aakashadesara/ctop && brew install ctop-claudeGitHub: github.com/aakashadesara/ctop — MIT licensed. PRs welcome (a recent adopter added performance improvements for 70+ sessions).
📖 Read the full source: r/ClaudeAI
👀 See Also
Claude Code Ultracode Mode Spawns 70-Agent Pipeline for Deep Search
A single 'deep search' request in Claude Code's ultracode mode auto-generated a 4-phase pipeline with ~70 agents, each fetching and cross-checking projects independently. The orchestrator script keeps intermediate results out of the context window, preventing context overload.
Karpathy's autoresearch project: AI agents run overnight LLM training experiments
Andrej Karpathy released a minimal autoresearch project where an AI agent edits train.py, runs 5-minute nanochat training experiments, checks if val_bpb improved, and repeats overnight on a single GPU.
iai-mcp: Local daemon gives Claude persistent memory across sessions with 99% recall
iai-mcp is an open-source local daemon that captures every Claude conversation, organizes it into three memory tiers, and feeds context back on new sessions. Achieves >99% verbatim recall, retrieval under 100ms, and session-start cost under 3,000 tokens.
Open-Sourced the-vibe-stack: Markdown Rules to Maintain Claude Code Consistency
A developer has open-sourced 'the-vibe-stack' — a set of Markdown rules designed to keep Claude Code on track during long sessions by enforcing a rigid schema. The approach aims to reduce logic drift and token waste while ensuring predictable output.