ccstory 0.4.0

Claude Code usage recap with narrative. ccusage tells you the bill, ccstory tells the story.

ccstory

Your Claude Code week, in plain English. Reads ~/.claude/projects/**/*.jsonl locally and writes a categorized recap with active hours, costs, and a per-bucket narrative.

Sibling to ccusage: ccusage tells you how much you spent · ccstory tells you what on.

Who this is for

• People who want to write a weekly status without scrolling scrollback.
• People who saw a ccusage number and want to know what kind of work those tokens went to.
• People who do a Sunday-night reflection on what they actually shipped.

Quick start

pipx install ccstory
ccstory init
ccstory week

That's it. init is a one-time auto-categorize step that scans your recent sessions; ccstory week produces the recap. Full report saves to ~/.ccstory/reports/recap-*.md.

Demo

╭──────────────── Claude Code Recap · May 5 – 12, 2026 ────────────────╮
│                                                                      │
│  ★ Top focus  coding  10.9h  (53% of active time)                    │
│    ↳ Built /show-routine slash command using bash+python to fetch…   │
│                                                                      │
│  Active  20.6h  Sessions  74   Output  2.92M                         │
│  Turns   3,692  Cache     96%  Cost    $1,608                        │
│                                                                      │
│  Time by category                                                    │
│  coding          ███████████████░░░░░░░░░░░░░   10.9h    53%         │
│  writing         █████████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░    6.2h    30%         │
│  research        █████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░    3.5h    17%         │
│                                                                      │
│  Full report → ~/.ccstory/reports/recap-2026-05-10_2026-05-17.md     │
│                                                                      │
╰────────────────────────────── ccstory ───────────────────────────────╯

The markdown report adds a 2–3 sentence synthesis per bucket plus per-session one-liners. Run with --llm-narrative to upgrade per-session lines from the instant first-user-msg fallback to claude-polished prose:

### coding

Shipped the /show-routine slash command end-to-end this week — bash+python
wrapper to surface scheduled-task output, plus a routine-detail bookmark
flow after the live debug session on Wednesday.

- 2026-05-10 03:24 · 123m · 212 msg — Built /show-routine slash command using
  bash+python to fetch scheduled-task output and surface it inline.
- 2026-05-08 12:30 · 67m · 294 msg — Debugged hook race condition in
  background-task notification dispatch; landed fix in main.

Usage

Basic

Command	What it does
ccstory init	One-time auto-categorize from recent sessions
ccstory	Current month so far (default window)
ccstory week	Past 7 days
ccstory month	Current month
ccstory 2026-04	A specific month
ccstory trend	Last 8 weeks of sparklines
ccstory category list	Show your custom bucket rules
ccstory category set <bucket> <keyword>…	Pin a project to a bucket
ccstory category unset <bucket> <keyword>…	Remove a keyword from a bucket

Advanced

Window

Command	What it does
ccstory all	Entire history
ccstory trend --weeks 12	Custom trend range
ccstory trend --months 6	By calendar months

Narrative depth

Flag	What it does
--minimal	Numbers only, no per-session lines
--llm-narrative	claude -p per-session prose (slow, opt-in)
--no-aggregate	Skip the per-bucket synthesis

Comparison block (vs-previous, auto-attached to week/month)

Flag	What it does
--no-compare	Skip the entire block
--no-compare-narrative	Keep numeric deltas, drop the prose

Session classification mode

Flag	What it does
--classify folder	Folder-name rules only
--classify content	claude -p reads each session
--classify hybrid	User rule wins, else content (default)

Export

Flag	What it does
--for=obsidian	YAML frontmatter + [[wikilinks]]

Refresh (apply rule changes retroactively)

Flag	What it does
--refresh	Re-classify cached sessions in this window after a rule edit
--refresh-all	Wipe the entire content-classification cache, not just this window

Trend output

Hours by bucket
total          ▁▄▆▇▃█    16.5h   avg 9.0h   ▲ +183%
coding         ▁▂▃▄▁█    10.2h   avg 3.3h   ▲ +1148%
writing        ▁▇█▆▁▁     6.2h   avg 4.1h   ▲ +51%
research       ▁▃▅█▆█     3.5h   avg 2.0h   ▲ +75%

Overall
output         ▁▁▁▄▁█     3.0M   avg 0.8M   ▲ +260%
cost           ▁▁▂▃▁█   $1,643   avg $463   ▲ +255%
burn %         ▁▁▂▃▁█     201%   avg 57%    ▲ +255%

The burn % row is API-equivalent cost as a percentage of your prorated monthly quota. Set monthly_quota_usd in ~/.ccstory/config.toml (default $3,500 ≈ Max 20x plan); set to 0 to hide the row.

Categories

Four default buckets, matched against the project folder name:

Bucket	Keywords (sample)
investment	investment, stock, portfolio, trading, ticker, etf, finance
writing	blog, newsletter, post, docs, content, article
coding	app, sdk, cli, plugin, mcp, server, frontend, backend, lib, …
other	playground, scratch, sandbox, experiment

Unmatched projects fall back to coding. Customize in ~/.ccstory/config.toml:

default_bucket = "coding"

[categories]
"work"    = ["company-repo", "internal-tool"]
"writing" = ["blog", "newsletter", "essay"]

Folder rules can be overridden per-session by content (--classify content / hybrid), where one batched claude -p call re-buckets sessions by what they were actually about. Results cache in ~/.ccstory/cache.db so reruns are free.

Obsidian export

ccstory --for=obsidian swaps the plain markdown for a PKM-vault-ready variant with YAML frontmatter and [[wikilinks]]:

---
date_start: 2026-05-10
date_end: 2026-05-17
active_hours: 20.6
top_focus: coding
buckets: [coding, writing, research]
cost_usd: 1608.42
output_tokens: 2920000
---

Queryable in Obsidian's Dataview / Bases (WHERE top_focus = "coding"). Bucket names with special characters are JSON-quoted so the frontmatter stays valid even for client: acme, inc.

Custom pricing

Default API list prices snapshot to 2026-01. The report footer always shows the snapshot date so a stale price table can't silently distort cost over time. Override per-model in ~/.ccstory/config.toml:

[prices]
snapshot_date = "2026-04"

[prices.opus]
input       = 15.0
output      = 75.0
cache_write = 18.75
cache_read  = 1.5

Partial overrides are fine — unspecified keys keep their default. Defining a brand-new model ([prices.custom]) with only some keys defaults the rest to $0 with a warning so misconfig is loud.

How ccstory differs from ccusage

	ccusage	ccstory
Role	The bill	The story
Active hours (5-min gap heuristic)	—	✅
Activity categories	—	✅ folder rules + content-aware
Per-session narrative	—	✅ via local claude -p
Per-bucket synthesis	—	✅
Cross-period narrative	—	✅
Local-only / no telemetry	✅	✅

Pair them — ccusage monthly for the spend, ccstory month for the breakdown:

ccusage monthly
ccstory month

Privacy

Everything runs locally. ccstory never sends your conversation data anywhere.

• Data source: ~/.claude/projects/**/*.jsonl — Claude Code's own logs.
• Narratives: subprocess-call your local claude -p (uses your own session / quota, no API key needed, no cost to ccstory).
• Cache: ~/.ccstory/cache.db (sqlite, per-session summaries).
• Reports: ~/.ccstory/reports/recap-*.md.

No telemetry, no network calls, no upload buttons. Verify in ccstory/session_summarizer.py.

Requirements

• Python 3.11+ and pipx (brew install pipx on macOS, other platforms).
• Claude Code CLI on PATH — required for --llm-narrative, content classification, and the cross-period synthesis. Without it, narratives fall back to the first user message and --classify falls back to folder rules.

Implementation notes

• Time math: 5-minute gap heuristic — consecutive messages within 5 minutes count as active, longer gaps are "stepped away". Wall-clock dedup prevents parallel sessions from double-counting. The 5-min cap is a practical floor for "still at the keyboard"; comparable across periods even though not precise.
• Timezone: session timestamps are parsed UTC-aware. Window boundaries (week, month) are local-midnight aligned, so "this week" matches the calendar week you actually lived in. --weeks N for trend mode does the same.
• Cost comparison: cross-period diffs use output tokens, not total_tokens. In typical use ~96% of total_tokens is cache_read, which inflates with turn count and system prompt size and isn't a stable signal of work done. Output tokens stay comparable month over month.
• Pricing: prices are list prices snapshotted by date (default 2026-01); the snapshot date renders in every report footer so stale numbers can't sneak past unnoticed.

Roadmap

• More export flavors (Logseq, Notion)
• Optional PNG card export
• ccstory year — annual recap (Spotify-Wrapped style)
• Git commit / PR correlation per session

See the issue tracker for the full backlog.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.