Time awareness for coding agents, in Claude Code and Codex.
In Claude Code, every message stamped with the time it happened and how long it took. The agent hears when a turn runs long, a command is slow, or work resumes after a gap. At the end, where the session's time actually went.
Two fast turns render dim. The third crosses the slow threshold, so its duration is coloured and, with TOOL_TIMING on, named after the tool that caused it. Tool timing is off by default, so a plain install will not show the tool on its own. A real session, played back at real speed.
A coding agent has no clock. It cannot tell a two-minute turn from a forty-minute one, does not know the test suite always takes four minutes, and picks up yesterday's work as if no time had passed. Claude Timestamp gives it that sense of time, and shows you the same numbers.
There is nothing to set up. The defaults work as soon as it is installed.
In Claude Code, every assistant message carries the local time and how long the turn took, from the moment you pressed enter to the moment the reply appeared. A slow turn changes colour, and a gap between messages is marked, so a session you return to the next morning still reads in order. On exit you get the totals.
claude-timestamp: session lasted 1h30m over 12 turns, 24m18s of it waiting, 35m00s away.
slowest tools: Bash 41.2s (18 calls), WebFetch 8.1s (1 call), Read 2.0s (37 calls). 2 failed
Waiting and away never cover the same seconds, so together they add up to no
more than the session. The second line appears with TOOL_TIMING on.
The agent receives the time each prompt was sent, a short note when a turn runs long or a tool call is slow, how long ago a project or conversation was last active, and its own timeline after a compaction. A bundled skill tells it what each note is a reason to do, and lets it answer "how long has this session run?" from measurement. See What Claude is told.
Every turn goes into a timeline, and every shell command into a memory of how long it usually takes in this project. A new session starts with the slow ones named, so the agent runs them in the background and waits for CI as long as CI actually takes.
Usually slow in this project: gh run watch ~7m40s (5 runs), bash tests/run.sh ~4m02s (12 runs).
That Bash call took 6m10s (usually 4m02s).
Finished sessions are logged, and --stats adds them up: how long, how much of
it waiting and how much away, and, when you turn those on, per project and per
tool. See Reports and history.
It needs bash and jq.
Claude Code
Install from the Aranea marketplace:
claude plugin marketplace add https://github.com/AraneaDev/aranea-marketplace
claude plugin install claude-timestamp@araneaStart a new session afterwards: hooks are bound when a session starts.
Codex
codex plugin marketplace add AraneaDev/claude-timestamp
codex plugin add claude-timestamp@araneaStart a new session afterwards, and trust the plugin's hooks when Codex asks.
For installing jq and for Windows with WSL, see Install.
Claude Code in the terminal, the IDE extensions and the Code tab of the desktop app, and Codex. What works depends on the client, not on the model. Checked against Claude Code and Codex CLI 0.154.0.
| Feature | Claude Code | Codex | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Timestamp marker on each message | ✓ | ✗ | Codex has no event for drawing on a message |
| Idle divider and slow-turn colour | ✓ | ✗ | Drawn by the same marker |
| Prompt time told to Claude | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Turn-length and slow-tool notes | ✓ | ✓ | Codex timings are whole seconds |
| Resumption note, for a project or a conversation | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Note after a compaction | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Command memory and the usually-slow note | ✓ | ✓ | |
Turn timeline, --turns |
✓ | ✓ | |
A turn that ends in an API error recorded as error |
✓ | ✗ | Codex has no StopFailure event |
| Session summary at exit | ✓ | ✓ | Recorded in the history; codex exec does not display it |
History and --stats |
✓ | ✓ | |
time-awareness skill |
✓ | ✓ | |
/timestamps command |
✓ | ✗ | Codex uses the timestamps skill or setup.sh |
The Chat and Cowork tabs of the desktop app are not Claude Code and
have no hooks, so nothing here reaches them. Cloud sessions on the web read
hooks from the repository and from managed settings rather than from your
~/.claude, so a personal install does not apply there either.
Run /timestamps in Claude Code to pick a timezone, a clock format, a colour
or a preset; it takes effect on the next message. Every setting, the marker's
layout, colours and per-project settings are in
Configuration.
- Install: requirements, both clients, Windows, a blocked SSH port.
- Configuration:
/timestamps, the marker's layout, colours, every setting. - What Claude is told: every note the agent receives, and the skill.
- Reports and history:
--session,--turns,--commands,--stats. - Troubleshooting: when something is wrong, platform notes.
- How it works: the hooks, what they cost, and why.
- Contributing: setup, checks, screenshots, releases.
MIT
Built by Tim Schipper and released as open source under Aranea Development.