DHI Orbit

A local web dashboard that shows every Claude Code chat across one or more config directories on one page.

• A board of what needs you: questions, permission prompts, blocked jobs, and chats stalled on a usage limit.
• Reply to a chat from the page (one normal turn in that chat), stop it, or open it in Terminal.
• Usage limits per account (5-hour and 7-day), set up when you connect the account; never a guess.
• A graph of accounts, chats, work items and the files they touch.
• Optional WebGL "nebula" look (Settings, Look). The default look is plain and needs no GPU.
• Standard library only: no dependencies, no build step, no CDN.

Viewing costs zero model tokens: DHI Orbit only reads files. A reply you send is one normal turn in that chat.

Screenshots

Screenshots are not included yet (placeholder).

Install

Requires Python 3.10 or newer.

Homebrew (macOS or Linux):

brew install Dv04/dhi-orbit/dhi-orbit

pipx:

pipx install dhi-orbit

pip, in any virtualenv:

python3 -m pip install dhi-orbit

You also need Claude Code itself (claude on your PATH).

Quick start

dhi-orbit

orbit is a shorter name for the same command. Then open http://127.0.0.1:8787/v2/. dhi-orbit --help lists the options (--port, --window-hours, --every, --no-notify). macOS notifications for chats that need you are on by default; --no-notify turns them off.

On first run DHI Orbit creates its data directory, ~/.config/dhi-orbit (or $DHI_ORBIT_HOME), with mode 700, and an access token inside it (.token, mode 600). The page gets the token injected when it is served from loopback.

Upgrading from chatdash

DHI Orbit is the new name of chatdash. The chatdash command still works (as do chatdash-ask-hook, chatdash-stop-hook and chatdash-statusline), an existing ~/.config/chatdash data directory (with its chatdash.db) keeps being used, and the CHATDASH_* environment variables are still read; the DHI_ORBIT_* name wins when both are set. A status line meter or hook that chatdash installed keeps running (a small chatdash module forwards to DHI Orbit) and the meter is rewritten to the new command the next time you turn usage on for that account. While the old data directory is in use, the Schedules panel keeps managing your com.chatdash.* launchd jobs; new installs use com.dhi.orbit. Python imports are now dhi_orbit.

Connect your accounts

Open Settings > Accounts (a fresh install opens on that screen). Type a name, for example work, and press Connect account. DHI Orbit creates ~/.claude-work and runs Claude Code's own claude auth login for it: a claude.com sign-in page opens in this computer's browser, you approve, and the account shows as signed in. From another device (the page on your phone, say), open the sign-in link shown there instead, approve, and paste the code claude.com shows; it is typed into Claude Code's own prompt.

DHI Orbit never sees, stores or sends your password or tokens: Claude Code writes its credentials into that account's folder exactly as when you sign in in a terminal. Accounts you already use (~/.claude, any ~/.claude-<name>) appear by themselves.

• Disconnect hides an account from the board; its sign-in and chats are untouched. Reconnect shows it again.
• Delete signs the account out (claude auth logout) and moves its folder to the Trash. It needs you to type the account name, and refuses while a chat on it is running. ~/.claude (your default) is only signed out and hidden, never moved.

Use an account in a terminal with CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR=~/.claude-work claude, or start chats from the board. Only connect accounts that are yours; Anthropic's terms do not allow sharing logins.

Multi-account

DHI Orbit looks for config directories in your home folder: ~/.claude and any ~/.claude-<name> that contains both projects/ and sessions/. Each one is an account ("seat" in the UI): ~/.claude is called main, ~/.claude-work is called work. Replies, stop and new chats run through the unmodified claude binary with that account's CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR.

Labels come from the directory name (work is shown as "Work"). Override them, and mark accounts as read-only (shown, never acted on), in config.json in the data directory. Copy config.example.json to start.

Key	Default	Meaning
seat_labels	{}	account name to display label
read_only_accounts	[]	accounts that are shown but never replied to, stopped, spawned on or hooked
work_item_pattern	""	regex; a chat whose name matches it belongs to that work item (for example PROJ-\d+). Empty: no work items, chats group by account and folder
evidence_gate_work_items	[]	work items whose chats get the evidence gate on by default
default_cwd	your home folder	folder for chats started from the page
launchd_prefix	com.dhi.orbit	label prefix of the launchd jobs the Schedules panel manages
timezone	this computer's	IANA name used to show clock times
meter_log	<data dir>/meter.log	where usage readings come from (below)
public_url	""	host name of a tunnel you set up yourself (below)
hidden_accounts	[]	accounts disconnected in Settings > Accounts (not shown on the board)
plugins	{}	optional helper modules, for example {"usage_live": {"path": "/dir", "module": "usage_live"}}

The binary is found from $CLAUDE_BIN, then PATH, then ~/.local/bin/claude.

Usage limits

DHI Orbit does not call any usage endpoint. Claude Code hands its status line command each account's limits (rate_limits: five_hour and seven_day, with used_percentage and resets_at), for every chat, background ones included. DHI Orbit records them with a status line of its own:

• Connecting an account in Settings > Accounts turns it on when the account has no status line yet.
• Any other account has a Show usage button there. If the account already has a status line, DHI Orbit keeps it: its own command runs first to record the limits, then yours runs with the same input and its output is what your terminal shows. Turn off, Disconnect, or signing out main put your status line back exactly. A status line you changed yourself afterwards is never touched.
• Claude Code only runs the status line while a chat is open, so a new account shows "waiting for the first chat" until it has run one. With the meter off, the board says "usage not connected" instead.

The setting is the account's settings.json statusLine (your previous one is kept in dhi-orbit-statusline.json beside it). The readings go to a meter log, one tab-separated line per change: ISO time, config dir, session id, rate_limits JSON. dhi-orbit-statusline is the same command, if you prefer to call it from a status line script of your own, and contrib/statusline-meter.py is a standalone copy that only records.

A reading whose reset time has passed shows "?" and "reset since the last reading", never 0%. An optional usage_live plugin module (fetch_live(account_dir_name) returning {"five": pct, "seven": pct}) can supply a fallback reading; without it nothing is fetched.

Automatic actions

Everything that sends text into a chat on its own has a mode, off, dry-run or on, set in config.json (or on the Settings page). The default is dry-run: it logs what it would do and sends nothing. The modes are limit_resume, decision_hook, stop_gate, shadow_drafts, corrections, handoff and idle_compact. Automatic keep-warm (a tiny ping before a chat's prompt cache expires) is off until you switch it on in the toolbar. Permission prompts are never answered automatically.

Two optional Claude Code hooks feed the board. They are not installed for you; register them yourself in the Claude Code configuration of each account you want covered:

• dhi-orbit-ask-hook, a PreToolUse hook with matcher AskUserQuestion: puts a background chat's question on the board.
• dhi-orbit-stop-hook, a Stop hook: records a receipt (files changed, checks run) for each turn and, when the evidence gate is on, asks the chat for verification evidence before it ends. At most 3 blocks per turn.

Both fail open: any error, a read-only account, or a non-background session prints nothing and the chat carries on.

How a reply is delivered

Chat	Route
background session, idle or stopped	typed into claude attach <id> through a pty, confirmed by reading the prompt back from the transcript
open in a terminal tab	refused: Return does not submit through a paste into Claude's input box, and two writers corrupt a session
closed chat with no background job	claude --resume <id> --bg "<text>" (a copy under a new id; the first reply re-caches the context once)
working right now	refused until idle, or queued and sent when it goes idle

Security model

• The server binds to 127.0.0.1 only. The Host header is checked (no DNS rebinding).
• Every /api call needs the token from <data dir>/.token (header X-Token or ?token=). The token file is created with mode 600 in a mode 700 directory.
• Sends go only through the unmodified claude binary under each account. DHI Orbit makes no network calls of its own, except gh pr view (if gh is installed) to show whether a PR is still open, and, only if you configure the identity-header check below, one request to that identity endpoint.
• Reaching it from other devices is your choice and your setup: put a tunnel of your own in front of the loopback port and describe it in <data dir>/public.json (host, and either "key_login": true for a one-time key sign-in that sets a 30-day cookie, or team_domain plus emails for an identity-header check). With no public.json and no public_url, any other Host is refused. With a host but no sign-in method configured, it stays locked.

Compatibility

DHI Orbit reads undocumented Claude Code internals. These are not a stable interface and may change in any Claude Code update, which can break parts of DHI Orbit:

• <config dir>/sessions/<pid>.json (live session records) and <config dir>/jobs/<id>/state.json (background jobs),
• the transcripts, <config dir>/projects/*/*.jsonl,
• the screen output of claude attach and claude logs, parsed to read and answer permission prompts and questions.

Tested with Claude Code 2.1.289 on macOS. If something looks wrong after an update, the board may be showing stale or missing data; limits and health show UNKNOWN rather than OK when a source cannot be read.

macOS-only parts: opening a chat in Terminal and notifications use osascript, and the Schedules panel uses launchctl. DHI Orbit is developed on macOS; a clean pipx install on Linux was tested end to end (accounts, sign-in, board, nebula).

Development

python3 -m pytest -q

tools/mock/server.py serves the UI with synthetic data (no real chats are read); tools/acceptance/ holds the UI checks. docs/DESIGN.md records the visual design.

About

Built by Dev Sanghvi at DHI (https://dhi-tech.com).

License

MIT, see LICENSE.