claude-code-langfuse-hook

See what your team is doing in Claude Code.

This is a small tool that hooks into Claude Code and sends every turn to Langfuse — so you can see who used Claude, on which project, how many tokens, and how much it cost.

You get:

• One trace per turn, grouped by session.
• Tagged with the project name and model.
• Attributed to the engineer's git email.
• Token counts (including prompt-cache hits) so Langfuse can show real cost.

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Before you start a couple of disclaimers

This works with Claude Code CLI only. It does not work with Claude on the web (claude.ai) or the Claude desktop app. The desktop app runs in its own sandbox and doesn't expose hooks, so there's no way for this package to plug in.

The costs are estimates. Numbers are computed from token counts using Anthropic's published API base rates. They won't match your official Anthropic invoice down to the cent. Treat them as a way to get a feel for usage by team, project, or person — not as a billing source of truth.

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Step 1 — Get a Langfuse instance

You need a Langfuse somewhere to send the data to. Three options:

• Try it on your laptop — run Langfuse locally with Docker Compose: langfuse.com/self-hosting/local.
• Self-host on a VM — deploy on any VM or Kubernetes cluster: langfuse.com/self-hosting.
• Use the cloud — sign up at cloud.langfuse.com.

Once it's running, create a project inside Langfuse and copy the public key, secret key, and base URL. You'll paste them in below.

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Step 2 — Install the hook

pipx install claude-code-langfuse-hook   # recommended
# or
pip install --user claude-code-langfuse-hook

Then plug it into Claude Code:

claude-langfuse install

This adds one line to ~/.claude/settings.json so every Claude Code session triggers the hook. You only do this once per machine.

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Step 3 — Turn it on for a project

Add five lines to your project's .env file:

CC_TRACE_TO_LANGFUSE=true
CC_PROJECT_NAME=my-project
CC_LANGFUSE_BASE_URL=https://langfuse.example.com
CC_LANGFUSE_PUBLIC_KEY=pk-lf-...
CC_LANGFUSE_SECRET_KEY=sk-lf-...

Don't want to type them? Run claude-langfuse init and copy-paste.

That's all. The next time you use Claude Code in this project, traces will show up in Langfuse.

Tip: real OS environment variables beat the .env file. So you can commit the non-secret lines to .env.example and let direnv, doppler, 1Password, or Vault inject the keys.

Note on the CC_ prefix: every variable starts with CC_ so this hook doesn't accidentally pick up keys meant for some other Langfuse-using app running in the same shell. Plain LANGFUSE_PUBLIC_KEY is ignored on purpose.

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Commands you can run

Command	What it does
claude-langfuse install	Hooks into Claude Code (one time per machine)
claude-langfuse uninstall	Unhooks it
claude-langfuse init	Prints the .env block to copy-paste
claude-langfuse status	Tells you if everything is wired up
claude-langfuse test	Sends a fake trace to check the connection
claude-langfuse hook	Internal — Claude Code runs this for you

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What shows up in Langfuse

For every Claude Code turn, you'll see one trace shaped like this:

trace          "Claude Code - Turn N"     session, user, project, model
└─ span        "Claude Code - Turn N"     the user's prompt
   ├─ generation  "Claude Response"       Claude's reply + token usage
   └─ tool        "Tool: <name>"          one per tool Claude called

A few things to know:

• Who did it. user_id is taken from git config user.email. If that's missing, the hook falls back to your OS username and logs a warning.
• Grouping. All turns from the same Claude Code session share a session_id, so they group nicely in Langfuse's Sessions view.
• Big payloads get trimmed. Anything over CC_LANGFUSE_MAX_CHARS (default 20,000) is truncated. The trim records the original length and a sha256 hash so you can prove the original existed.

Token usage and cost

Claude charges four different rates depending on what kind of input tokens you used — especially when prompt caching is on. The hook sends all four to Langfuse:

Token kind	Roughly costs
input_tokens	base input
output_tokens	base output
cache_creation_input_tokens	1.25× base input
cache_read_input_tokens	0.1× base input

Langfuse's built-in price table already knows these names, so you'll see accurate dollar amounts without any extra setup.

Extended thinking

When Claude is in "extended thinking" mode, the reasoning isn't shown in the main input/output (which would be noisy). Instead it's tucked into the generation's Metadata → thinking tab in Langfuse so you can read it if you want to.

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All the variables

Var	Required?	What it does
CC_TRACE_TO_LANGFUSE	yes	Set to true to turn tracing on for this project
CC_PROJECT_NAME	yes	The project name tagged on every trace
CC_LANGFUSE_BASE_URL	yes	Your Langfuse URL
CC_LANGFUSE_PUBLIC_KEY	yes	Langfuse public key
CC_LANGFUSE_SECRET_KEY	yes	Langfuse secret key
CC_LANGFUSE_DEBUG	no	Set to true for chatty logs
CC_LANGFUSE_MAX_CHARS	no	Trim long content above this size (default 20000)

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Things that might go wrong

What you see	Why	What to do
No traces in Langfuse	The hook isn't installed	Run claude-langfuse install, then claude-langfuse status to confirm
status says config is incomplete	A required variable is missing	Run claude-langfuse init and fill in the five CC_* vars
user_id is your OS username, not your email	Git doesn't know your email	git config user.email you@example.com
Tool calls show up as plain spans	Your Langfuse is older than v3.10	Upgrade Langfuse
Hook fails with socksio import error	You use a SOCKS proxy	pipx inject claude-code-langfuse-hook httpx[socks]
Cost is $0	Langfuse doesn't have a price for the model	In Langfuse: Settings → Models → add the model with prices for input, output, cache_creation_input, cache_read_input
Hook times out (over 15s)	Your transcript is huge	Raise the timeout in ~/.claude/settings.json, or lower CC_LANGFUSE_MAX_CHARS

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Working on this package

git clone <repo>
cd pypi-package
pip install -e . pytest
pytest

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License

MIT.