Copilot Usage Analytics

A local-first analytics dashboard that parses your VS Code Copilot chat session data and visualises token usage, premium request estimates, and model distribution — all without sending any data externally.

Why I Built This

I built this tool to make GitHub Copilot usage more transparent and actionable in real development work. Beyond showing token usage over time, it helps estimate and allocate AI costs at repository level — something that is difficult today when developers work across multiple systems in parallel. By turning persisted Copilot session data into a timeline tied to projects, the tool makes it easier to understand usage patterns, compare workflows, and assign clearer estimated costs to each repo.

Features

• Incremental scanning — Only parses new or changed JSONL files on each run
• DuckDB storage — Fast local analytical database, no server required
• Premium request estimation — Calculates costs based on GitHub's model multiplier table
• Multi-page dashboard — Overview with KPI cards and charts, plus a detailed Explorer page with search & filters
• Per-workspace breakdown — See which projects use the most tokens
• Model distribution — Visualise usage across GPT-4o, Claude, Gemini, and other models
• Badge export — Shields.io-compatible JSON badges for each workspace
• Cross-platform — Windows, macOS, and Linux

Quick Start

Install

pip install -e .

Run

# Scan data and launch dashboard (default)
copilot-usage

# Scan only (no dashboard)
copilot-usage analyze

# Dashboard only (skip scan)
copilot-usage dashboard

The dashboard opens automatically at http://127.0.0.1:8050.

CLI Options

Flag	Description
--port PORT	Dashboard port (default: 8050)
--no-browser	Don't auto-open browser
-v, --verbose	Enable debug logging

CLI & Terminal Dashboard

The tool ships with an interactive CLI powered by Rich and InquirerPy. When launched without arguments, you get an arrow-key menu to scan, launch the web dashboard, open the terminal dashboard, or adjust settings — all without leaving the terminal.

A full terminal UI dashboard built with Textual shows KPIs, model breakdown, and workspace stats directly in the console. Press S to trigger a scan, R to refresh, and Q to quit.

# Interactive mode (arrow-key menu)
copilot-usage

# Launch terminal dashboard directly
copilot-usage tui

Web Dashboard

The web dashboard is a multi-page Plotly Dash application served locally. It provides interactive charts, filterable tables, and real-time pipeline controls — all rendered in the browser with no external dependencies or data leaving your machine.

Overview

The main page shows at-a-glance KPI cards, a daily token timeline chart, model distribution pie chart, and summary tables for workspaces and sessions.

Explorer

A dedicated search & filter page where you can:

• Search by session ID, workspace, or model name
• Filter by date range, workspace, model, and minimum token count
• Sort results by any column
• Browse the full event-level detail

Pipeline

Run the data ingestion pipeline directly from the dashboard with a real-time console output.

Badges

Generate Shields.io-compatible JSON badges for your workspaces.

Settings

Manage appearance (dark/light theme toggle), view system info, and erase the database.

How It Works

1. Discovery — Finds all chatSessions/*.jsonl files in VS Code workspace storage
2. Parsing — Extracts session anchors, request metadata, and token counts from JSONL events
3. Ingestion — Writes structured events to a local DuckDB database with premium cost estimates
4. Aggregation — Pre-computes daily, per-session, and per-workspace summaries
5. Dashboard — Plotly Dash serves interactive charts and tables from the local database

Data Source

The tool reads from VS Code's local storage:

Platform	Path
Windows	%APPDATA%\Code\User\workspaceStorage\
macOS	~/Library/Application Support/Code/User/workspaceStorage/
Linux	~/.config/Code/User/workspaceStorage/

No data leaves your machine. Everything is processed and stored locally.

Database

DuckDB database is stored at:

Platform	Path
Windows	%LOCALAPPDATA%\copilot-usage\copilot_usage.duckdb
macOS	~/Library/Application Support/copilot-usage/copilot_usage.duckdb
Linux	~/.local/share/copilot-usage/copilot_usage.duckdb

Model Multipliers

Premium request estimates use GitHub's published multiplier table:

Model	Multiplier
GPT-4.1, GPT-4o, Claude Sonnet 4, Gemini 2.5 Flash	0× (included)
O4-mini, Gemini 2.5 Pro, Claude Sonnet 4 Thinking	1×
Claude Opus 4.6, O3	3×

Project Structure

src/copilot_usage/
├── __main__.py        # CLI entrypoint (interactive + classic)
├── config.py          # Paths, model multipliers
├── db.py              # DuckDB schema & connection
├── discovery.py       # JSONL file discovery
├── parser.py          # JSONL parsing
├── ingest.py          # Event ingestion
├── aggregator.py      # Pre-aggregation
├── pipeline.py        # Scan orchestrator
├── badges.py          # Shields.io badge export
├── logging.py         # Loguru logging config
├── tui.py             # Textual terminal dashboard
└── dashboard/
    ├── app.py         # Dash multi-page app
    ├── assets/        # CSS & favicon
    ├── pages/
    │   ├── overview.py    # KPI + charts page
    │   ├── explorer.py    # Search & filter page
    │   ├── pipeline.py    # Pipeline runner page
    │   ├── badges.py      # Badge generator page
    │   └── settings.py    # Settings, logs & DB management
    └── queries.py     # DB queries

Limitations

Token counts shown by this tool are estimates and may not match GitHub's official billing figures. Key reasons:

Factor	Impact
No official token API	GitHub does not expose per-request token counts through any public API. This tool relies on metadata embedded in VS Code's local JSONL session files, which is not guaranteed to be complete or stable.
Missing token fields	Some JSONL result entries lack promptTokens / outputTokens entirely (e.g. cancelled requests, certain agent-mode responses). When missing, the tool falls back to estimating from the raw text using tiktoken's cl100k_base encoding — or a ~4 chars/token heuristic if tiktoken is unavailable.
Tokenizer mismatch	Different models use different tokenizers. The tool always uses cl100k_base (GPT-4 family) for estimation, which may over- or under-count for Claude, Gemini, or newer OpenAI models.
System prompt & context not visible	VS Code injects system prompts, file context, and retrieval-augmented content before sending to the model. These hidden tokens are counted by GitHub but are not recorded in the local session files, so prompt token counts are typically lower than actual.
Tool-call overhead	Agentic requests with multiple tool-call rounds accumulate tokens across rounds. The JSONL files report the final totals, but intermediate round data may be incomplete.
Premium multiplier estimates	The cost multiplier table is a manually maintained snapshot. If GitHub changes pricing or introduces new models, estimates may be stale until the table is updated.
Legacy JSON files	Older VS Code versions stored sessions as plain JSON instead of JSONL. Token counts are always estimated from text content for these files.

Bottom line: Use the numbers for relative comparisons and trend analysis across your projects — not as an exact billing reconciliation.

Requirements

• Python ≥ 3.10
• VS Code with GitHub Copilot Chat extension

License

Apache 2.0 — see LICENSE.