roost-top 0.4

top for Claude Code -- live sessions, models, context, and the subagents they spawn

roost

top for Claude Code. Every live session, the model it is on, how much context it has burned — and, unlike anything else, the subagents it spawned.

One file, no dependencies, Python 3.9+. Runs on macOS, Linux and Windows.

  WORKER    MODEL    CTX  IDLE    TASK
NEAR LIMIT
  demo-a1   opus-5   85%  12s     refactor the parser
PARKED + COSTLY
  demo-b2   opus-5   61%  4h10m   audit the build scripts
WORKING NOW
  demo-c3   fable-5  22%  3s      add integration tests
STARTING
  demo-d4   -        -    -

QUIET (4)  demo-e5 . demo-f6 . demo-g7 . demo-h8

8 worker(s)  |  fable-5, opus-5

SUBAGENTS
  STATE    AGENT       MODEL     CTX  IDLE   TASK
  working  a812aca59f  opus-5    33%  2s     survey the config loaders
  idle     adaffaba4b  sonnet-5  67%  1h22m  draft the migration notes

  2 subagent(s), 1 working

INFRA  ollama:11434 up qwen2.5-coder:14b (9.2 GB)   litellm:4000 up   openwebui:8080 DOWN

Sessions are grouped by what it costs to ignore them, not by size: NEAR LIMIT is about to stop working, PARKED + COSTLY bills its whole context on the next turn, and everything quiet collapses to a single line.

Install

Homebrew (macOS and Linux):

brew install gmhoward9289-ops/tap/roost

Debian and Ubuntu, from the repo — this also gets you apt upgrade:

curl -fsSL https://gmhoward9289-ops.github.io/roost/roost-archive-keyring.asc | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/roost-archive-keyring.gpg
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/roost-archive-keyring.gpg] https://gmhoward9289-ops.github.io/roost stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/roost.list
sudo apt update
sudo apt install roost

Or, without adding a repo — grab roost_<version>_all.deb from the latest release:

sudo apt install ./roost_0.4_all.deb

Both resolve python3 exactly as a normal repo install would. The repo is signed with a dedicated key (not tied to any personal identity); its public half is packaging/apt/pubkey.asc in this repo, published unchanged as roost-archive-keyring.asc above.

With pipx:

pipx install roost-top

PyPI holds the bare name roost in reserve — a prior project's name, retained after deletion — so the package is roost-top; the command it installs is plain roost. Installing straight from the repo skips the index entirely:

pipx install git+https://github.com/gmhoward9289-ops/roost

Or just take the file. It is one script, stdlib only, no dependencies:

curl -o roost https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gmhoward9289-ops/roost/main/roost.py
chmod +x roost && ./roost

Windows: save it as roost.py and run it — .PY is in PATHEXT, so roost.py works from anywhere on PATH. There is no Windows package; the single file is the install.

The man page (man roost) ships with the Homebrew and .deb installs. A pipx install puts it under the venv's own share/man, which is not on the default MANPATH; read it in place with man "$(pipx environment --value PIPX_LOCAL_VENVS)/roost-top/share/man/man1/roost.1".

Use

roost              live, refreshing every second
roost -w 5         slower refresh
roost -1           one frame, then exit
roost --json       joined records, for piping

While running: space refresh now · a advice panel · s subagents panel · i arm interactive · q quit

Acting on a session

Experimental, and off by default. i arms interactive mode — the cursor, x, y, and the EXPERIMENTAL marker in the top-right corner all come alive together, and it means it: x ends a real process. Reading the dashboard has never been the risky half; i is the one key that draws the line. Press it again to disarm — the cursor drops and x/y/j/k stop responding until you press it once more.

Once armed, j/k (or the arrow keys) raise a cursor. Raising it expands the QUIET group, because a session idle for hours is exactly what a sweep is looking for and it is unreachable while collapsed.

key	does
i	arm or disarm interactive mode
j k ↓ ↑	move the cursor (interactive mode only)
x	stop the selected session — confirms first, and only y proceeds
y	copy its sessionId, for claude --resume <id>
esc	drop the cursor, re-collapse QUIET

Start already armed with roost --interactive if you know you'll be acting on a session right away.

x ends a process. It does not compact, save, or otherwise negotiate with the session — there is no local control channel into a running Claude Code session, so nothing gentler is available from outside it. On Unix that is a SIGTERM and the session exits on its own terms; on Windows there is no cross-process equivalent, so it is a TerminateProcess hard kill. Transcripts are written a turn at a time, so at most an in-flight turn is lost.

Both keys act on the row object that was on screen when you pressed them, never on an index re-resolved afterwards. Rows reorder between frames as sessions go quiet, and an index that outlived its frame would eventually stop the wrong one.

roost refuses to stop its own process or its parent — run it from inside the session it is pointed at and the cursor can land on the row that owns your terminal.

Only one panel is open at a time: a and s flip between ADVICE and SUBAGENTS rather than stacking. With two dozen sessions on screen a stacked second panel lands below the bottom of the terminal, which is indistinguishable from the key not working. For the same reason the frame now says ... N more line(s) below instead of quietly truncating.

What it logs

Every session stopped with x appends one JSON line to ~/.claude/logs/roost.jsonl — same shape and the same 5000-line cap as the hook logs beside it:

{"ts":"2026-07-31T00:22:57-0400","action":"stop","ok":true,"host":"COOPER",
 "name":"models-ca","pid":4321,"session_id":"abc-123","model":"claude-opus-5",
 "ctx_tokens":484030,"idle_secs":92500}

The session's task text is deliberately not recorded. It is free-form prose out of a transcript, and an audit trail of what was stopped should not become a copy of what was being worked on.

Because each record carries the context that session was holding, the log answers afterwards what a sweep actually reclaimed rather than just how many rows you closed. --no-log records nothing. A log that cannot be written is ignored rather than raised — losing the log is survivable, losing the display is not.

Why subagents are the interesting part

Subagents have no process of their own — they run as sidechains inside the parent's process. Every pid-based view is structurally blind to them.

They do each get a transcript, one directory deeper than the session transcripts:

~/.claude/projects/<slug>/<sessionId>/subagents/agent-<id>.jsonl

The short task description ("Scout source URLs") lives only in the parent's toolUseResult, keyed by agentId. roost joins the two, and falls back to the opening words of the subagent's own first message when the parent's record has scrolled out of reach.

Where the numbers come from

Three local, read-only sources. Nothing is sent anywhere; there is no network call except a localhost probe of the infra ports.

source	gives
~/.claude/sessions/<pid>.json	live sessions: pid, sessionId, launch cwd, name
~/.claude/projects/*/<sid>.jsonl	model in use, token usage
127.0.0.1 ports	ollama / litellm / openwebui

Context is the last assistant turn's `input_tokens + cache_read_input_tokens

• cache_creation_input_tokens`. Cross-checked against an independent tool on the same session: 77% vs 77.29%.

The context window is inferred, not recorded. Nothing on disk states which window a session opened with, and a session on the 1M window will read 480k+ cache tokens in a single call — scoring that against 200k yields a nonsense "242%". roost picks the smallest standard tier the usage fits and prints it in the WIN column, so the assumption is visible rather than silent. If a new tier ships, WINDOW_TIERS is the one line to edit.

Caveats

• It reads an undocumented on-disk format that can change without warning. That is the whole foundation; treat breakage as expected, not exceptional.
• The window inference above is a heuristic.
• The ADVICE panel's thresholds are tuned to one person's usage. Read EXPENSIVE_TOKENS and friends before trusting the advice.
• Daily-driven on macOS and Windows. CI runs the suite and a smoke frame on Linux, and it detects live sessions there — but nobody lives on it yet. Field reports welcome.

License

MIT — see LICENSE. Contact: [e-mail]

Built in a Digital Swamp. From my swamp to yours.