CTOP: Terminal UI to Monitor Claude Code Sessions, Zero Deps

CTOP is a terminal UI that lets you monitor all your running Claude Code and Codex sessions from a single pane. It's built with pure Node.js, has zero dependencies, makes no network calls, and works on macOS, Linux, and Windows.

What it shows per session

• CPU, memory, uptime, status
• Context window saturation bar (input / cache / output / free out of 200k)
• Token breakdown: input, output, cache creation, cache read
• Model, branch, session ID, service tier
• Cost estimates per session and aggregate

Other features

• Vim-style navigation (hjkl, g/G)
• Two view modes: list (table) and pane (card grid)
• Kill individual or all sessions (SIGTERM or SIGKILL)
• Sort by CPU, memory, context%; filter by branch/model/directory
• Live log tailing and full-text search across conversations
• Desktop notifications when sessions complete
• 5 color themes, plugin system

The author runs 6–15+ Claude and Codex sessions across different repos and built CTOP to track context burn, idle sessions, and memory usage. It pairs well with Agent View — Agent View handles dispatching and input needs, while CTOP fills in cost tracking, CPU/memory, context window bars, and historical stats.

Installation

npm i -g ctop-claude

Or via Homebrew:

brew tap aakashadesara/ctop && brew install ctop-claude

GitHub: github.com/aakashadesara/ctop — MIT licensed. PRs welcome (a recent adopter added performance improvements for 70+ sessions).