watch-claude-think

> A real-time view into Claude Code's thinking brain


watch-claude-think is an interactive CLI that monitors and displays Claude's internal reasoning across all your claude sessions in a folder.

watch-claude-think doesn't use tokens or make web requests - it just monitors your ~/.claude folder and displays thinking updates.

Quick Start

Enable thinking mode in Claude Code (press Tab) and run:

``bash
npx watch-claude-think
`

Or with other package managers:

- pnpm: pnpm dlx watch-claude-think
- yarn: yarn dlx watch-claude-think
- bun: bunx watch-claude-think

Why

Watching Claude Code think is fun, and actually has been pretty useful:

- It's an easy way to catch silly assumptions and interject before Claude spins its wheels on the wrong thing
- Claude's thoughs can hint at alternative approaches, architecture choices, or dependencies
- It's a great way to improve prompting - you'll see quickly when Claude has the context it needs cleary does not
- Claude often thinkgs things that it does not output, and some of those things are quite useful to read

Also, sometimes it's a riot:

> "4:02:16 PM Claude: I have lint errors. Let me fix them:
>
> 1. currentFilePaths should be const - but actually we do reassign it in the index operation. The linter is wrong here, but I'll change the logic to avoid the mutation

ctrl-o in Claude Code shows thinking briefly, but the view disappears, gets obscured by other messages, and doesn't persist across agents.

Installation

$3

Use npx (or equivalent) as shown in Quick Start.

$3

`bash
npm install -g watch-claude-think


or

pnpm add -g watch-claude-think

or

yarn global add watch-claude-think

or

bun add -g watch-claude-think
`

Then run watch-claude-think from anywhere.

Usage

$3

Press Tab in Claude Code to toggle thinking mode ON.

$3

Run npx watch-claude-think (or watch-claude-think if installed globally).

$3

1. Pick your folder/proejct (or worktree) from the list
2. Choose either:
- Watch All Sessions - see all Claude activity in this project
- Watch Specific Session - focus on one conversation

Session names may not match Claude Code /resume names exactly...when in doubt, watch All Sessions.

ClaudeSmells

Signs you should intervene:

- "But these tests aren't related to my changes and were already failing" - are you sure?
- "Let me mock..." - Claude over-mocks instead of solving problems
- Modifying project config (like tsconfig.json) without your explicit request - this often ends badly
- "Let me try a simpler approach" - often at the expense of correctness or understanding
- "FOUND IT!" - Claude probably didn't find it
- "Now I need to update the other two components that also use..." - keep it DRY
- High "Actually" count - Claude is spinning. After ~22 "Actually..." statements, I once got: "Actually, you know what, let me try the simplest possible thing: just don't render a footer at all for now. Keep the keyboard shortcuts working, but don't show the persistent footer UI. This eliminates the problem entirely." 🤠

Requirements

- Node.js 18+
- Active Claude Code sessions (reads from ~/.claude/projects`)

License

MIT

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Made with Claude Code. No code was hand-crafted in the making of this package.