Why I made it

A friend asked me whether there was a handy app for Claude Code, Anthropic’s AI coding assistant for the terminal, that shows the history as a list of headings instead of one long scroll. I couldn’t find one, so I built this plugin.

session-outline adds a side pane next to the chat. It lists every prompt, the headings of each answer, the files that changed and the turns that went wrong. Click a row, or press Enter, and the chat scrolls to that message.

What the pane looks like

3 prompts
h: ● Headings  f: ● Files  b: ○ Only ⭐  k: ○ Compact chat
i: By file  p: Past sessions  x: Export  e: Expand all  r: ↻
[/ filter: prompts, headings, files]
──────────────────────────────────────────
  ▸ 1. ✗ fix the build
 ▶▾ 2. ⭐ add documentation
       · Installation
       · Usage
       ✎ README.md, ~build.sh · ⚙ 12 · ⏱ 2m 10s
──────────────────────────────────────────
Turn 2:  o: Expand/collapse  s: ⭐  y: Copy answer  a: Ask again…  d: Diff

Text mock-up of the pane: two turns, the second one expanded and bookmarked.

Features

Outline of turns: prompt → answer headings → changed files, with the time and tokens of each turn.
Jump to a message in the chat by clicking a row or pressing Enter.
Diff of the selected turn’s changes, right in the pane.
Markers: ⚠ a tool returned an error, ✗ a test command failed, ⏹ the turn was interrupted, ⭐ bookmark.
By file: every changed file with the turns that touched it.
Past sessions of the project, with search. Click one to copy claude --resume <id>.
Compact chat: hides the tool-call rows. ctrl+o still shows everything.
Bookmarks, copy the answer, ask again, and export the whole outline as Markdown.
Filter by prompts, headings and files.
English and Russian interface. By default the pane follows Claude Code’s language setting, then the language you write your prompts in, then $LANG. You can also set it in the plugin’s options in /plugin.

Install

The plugin installs from my GitHub repository, which works as its own plugin marketplace. At the prompt of a Claude Code terminal session:

/plugin install session-outline --marketplace gynsus/session-outline

Answer y to add the marketplace, then pick a scope (user scope is the usual choice).

From a shell:

claude plugin install session-outline --marketplace gynsus/session-outline

In the Claude Code desktop app: click + next to the prompt box → Plugins → Add marketplace with gynsus/session-outline → Add plugin.

The pane opens by itself in a wide terminal (fullscreen layout, about 110–144 columns and up). Otherwise run /outline.

Keys

The pane must have focus for the keys to work: click it, press ctrl+x tab, or run /outline.

Key	What it does
`↑` `↓`	Move between rows
`Enter` / click	Jump to that prompt or heading in the chat
`o`	Expand or collapse the selected turn
`s`	Bookmark the turn ⭐
`y`	Copy the answer
`a`	Send the prompt again (press twice)
`d`	Show the diff
`h` `f` `b` `k`	Toggle headings, files, only bookmarked turns, compact chat
`i`	Files view
`p`	Past sessions
`x`	Export the outline as Markdown
`e`	Expand all
`r`	Refresh
`q`	Back
`Esc`	Return to the prompt

Limitations

← and → do nothing in the pane: a plugin pane gets no keystrokes of its own.
After a restart, older messages are drawn only once you scroll to them, so the first jump to them goes in steps. If it stops, scroll up a bit and press Enter again.
Rows are matched to messages by text, so two identical prompts can be swapped after a restart.
Files changed by shell commands (sed -i, >, mv, …) are a guess. They are marked ~ and have no diff.
Diffs have no real line numbers.
Time and tokens are shown only for turns that finished while the plugin was loaded. Tokens include cache reads, so the numbers are large.

License and feedback

session-outline 0.1.0 is open source under the MIT License. The code is on GitHub. Bug reports and ideas are welcome in issues.

Navigation

session-outline