Claude-Replay Turns Your Anthropic Claude Code Sessions Into Shareable Video-Like Replays

Claude Code now accounts for 4% of all GitHub commits — and that number is climbing fast. But here’s the thing nobody talks about: every single Claude Code session generates a detailed JSONL transcript stored locally on your machine. Hundreds of sessions, thousands of lines of prompts, tool calls, thinking blocks, and outputs — all sitting in hidden files that nobody ever looks at again. Until now.

Claude-replay is an open-source tool that converts those raw session logs into interactive, self-contained HTML replays. Think of it as a screen recorder for your AI coding sessions, except the output is a lightweight HTML file you can email, embed in a PR, or drop into Slack.

The Problem: AI Coding Sessions Disappear the Moment They End

If you’ve used Claude Code for any serious project, you know the frustration. You spend 45 minutes working through a complex refactoring session with Claude, the AI makes brilliant decisions along the way, and then… it’s gone. The terminal scrolls past, and that entire workflow evaporates.

Sure, the JSONL transcript exists somewhere in ~/.claude/. But good luck finding the right one among hundreds of session files. And even if you do, raw JSONL is practically unreadable — a wall of nested JSON objects with streaming chunks, thinking blocks, and tool call metadata all mashed together.

This creates real problems. You can’t show a colleague how Claude solved a tricky bug. You can’t review your own prompting patterns to improve. You can’t create training materials for your team. And you definitely can’t embed a 50MB JSONL file in your documentation.

How Claude-Replay Tackles It

Claude-replay takes a straightforward approach. Point it at a JSONL session file, and it spits out a single HTML file — no external dependencies, no server required, no JavaScript frameworks to install.

npx claude-replay session.jsonl -o replay.html

That one command is all it takes. The tool parses the JSONL transcript, compresses the data using deflate compression (typically achieving 60-70% size reduction), and injects everything into a vanilla JavaScript player template. The browser’s native DecompressionStream API handles the rest.

The resulting HTML file works exactly like a video player. You get a progress bar, speed controls, step-through navigation, and the ability to jump to any point in the session. But unlike actual video, you can copy code snippets, expand collapsed sections, and inspect tool calls to see exactly which files Claude touched.

What It Actually Looks Like in Practice

The replay player offers several features worth knowing about:

Playback controls. Speed up, slow down, or step through the session one message at a time. A paced timing mode adds synthetic delays based on content length, making demos feel more natural even for sessions that originally happened in bursts.

Content filtering. Thinking blocks and tool calls are collapsible by default. You can also strip them entirely with CLI flags if you want a cleaner output focused on just the conversation flow.

Bookmarking. Add chapter markers to long sessions so viewers can jump directly to the interesting parts — useful when a 200-turn session has three key moments buried in the middle.

Six built-in themes plus custom theme support. The terminal-style scrolling option mimics the command-line experience, which feels natural for developer audiences.

Automatic secret redaction. The tool scans for common credential patterns — API keys, Bearer tokens, database URLs, private key blocks — and redacts them before generating the HTML. It’s pattern-based, so it won’t catch everything, but it’s a reasonable first pass.

Cursor support. Beyond Claude Code, the tool also handles Cursor agent JSONL transcripts, using paced timing by default since Cursor logs don’t include timestamps.

The Community Reaction: 413 Stars and Counting

Claude-replay hit Hacker News via Show HN about three days ago and pulled in 102 points and 35 comments. The GitHub repo has already accumulated 413 stars and 19 forks.

The reception on HN was largely positive, though with some healthy skepticism. Several commenters highlighted the team onboarding angle — one noted it was “amazing for getting new team members onboarded with Claude Code processes.” Educators flagged classroom applications. Hardware engineers mentioned using it for project demos.

The criticism centered on two points. First, finding the right session file is still painful. Users reported struggling to locate specific sessions among hundreds of JSONL files in ~/.claude/. The creator acknowledged this gap and mentioned potential search helpers. Second, some questioned whether a replay format adds enough value over a simple text dump. The counterargument: text dumps don’t let you step through the AI’s reasoning process turn by turn, which is where the real insight lives.

The project is MIT-licensed, requires Node.js 18+, and has zero production dependencies (esbuild is dev-only). With 75 commits on the main branch, it’s clearly an actively maintained project rather than a weekend hack.

Alternatives and Similar Tools

Claude-replay isn’t the only tool in this space, though it’s currently the most focused:

agentlore — Mentioned in the HN discussion, this project focuses on team-wide log aggregation rather than individual session replay. It’s aimed at organizations that want to analyze patterns across multiple developers’ Claude Code usage.

claude-code-transcripts — A complementary tool focused on searching and browsing session files rather than replaying them. Useful for finding the right session before feeding it into claude-replay.

Manual JSONL reading — You can always open the raw files directly. Tools like jq can help parse them, but you lose the interactive playback experience and the ability to share with non-technical stakeholders.

The broader context matters here. With Claude Code’s user base exploding — the Anthropic Claude Code GitHub repo sits at 75,700+ stars — and 4% of all GitHub commits now being authored by Claude Code, the demand for session management and sharing tools is only growing. Claude-replay fills a specific gap that Anthropic hasn’t addressed natively yet.

Who Should Care About This

Claude-replay makes the most sense for three groups:

Team leads and engineering managers who need visibility into how their team uses AI coding tools. Instead of asking “how did you solve that?” in standup, you can share a replay link.

Developer educators and content creators who want to demonstrate AI-assisted coding workflows without recording and editing screen captures. A 2KB HTML file beats a 500MB video every time.

Individual developers who want to review and improve their own prompting patterns. Watching your sessions back reveals habits you don’t notice in real-time — over-specifying, under-specifying, missing opportunities to use Claude’s tool capabilities.

If you’re a casual Claude Code user running a few sessions a week, you probably don’t need this. But if Claude Code is part of your daily workflow, being able to search, replay, and share sessions removes real friction.

FAQ

Is Claude-replay free?
Yes. It’s fully open-source under the MIT license with zero production dependencies. Install it via npm or use it directly with npx without installation.

Does Claude-replay work with tools other than Claude Code?
It currently supports Claude Code and Cursor agent transcripts. Claude Code sessions include timestamps for accurate replay timing, while Cursor sessions use synthetic paced timing since they lack timestamp data.

Is it safe to share generated replay files?
Replay files embed the complete session transcript, including source code, file paths, and tool outputs. While automatic secret redaction catches common credential patterns, you should manually review the HTML before sharing publicly. It may contain proprietary code or internal file paths.

How large are the generated HTML files?
The tool uses deflate compression, typically achieving 60-70% size reduction compared to the raw JSONL. Most session replays result in files small enough to email or embed directly in documentation.

Does Anthropic officially support or endorse Claude-replay?
No. Claude-replay is a community-built tool, not an official Anthropic product. It works by parsing the JSONL session files that Claude Code already stores locally on your machine.

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