agenttrail Catches AI Coding Agents Quietly Reopening Finished Work
A dependency-free Node tool turns any repo into a live zoomable map showing exactly what Claude Code, Codex, and Cursor are doing.
PRO- agenttrail is a local, MIT-licensed observability canvas for Claude Code, Codex, and Cursor sessions (repo).
- It compares an agent's declared plan against observed file changes to catch stalls and silent regressions.
- The daemon is one dependency-free Node file (~470 lines) binding to 127.0.0.1 with no telemetry.
- Install by running
npx agenttrail --openinside any repo, no account required. - Claude Code gets full run cards via local hooks; Codex and Cursor use file-watcher based views.
- Uses a small
PLAN.mdconvention with components, dependencies, and file globs maintained by the agents themselves.
If you have left a coding agent running for half an hour and returned wondering whether it made real progress or quietly reopened work it already marked done, agenttrail is a small open-source tool built for exactly that situation. It runs locally, watches AI coding agents in real time, and renders what they are doing onto a zoomable canvas of your repo.
It turns plans, tool calls, file changes, and progress from Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, Cursor, or any agent that edits files into a live project map. One command opens it on localhost, giving you a live view of what your agents are actually touching versus what they said they would touch.
Declared intent versus observed behavior
agenttrail runs on two signals. A plan says what the agent intends to do. The filesystem says what it actually touched. When those signals disagree, that is where you look.
- Declared: The component and task the agent says it is working on
- Observed: The files it is changing right now, including revisions to finished work
A card marked done lights up again if the agent quietly reopens it. That reopening behavior is one of the more common failure modes in long-running sessions.
This story is for Pro members
You've reached the end of the free preview. Upgrade to AlphaSignal Pro to read the full article - and everything else behind the paywall.
Comments
