Session replay: Claude Code mapper — Task/Agent/Workflow fanout, inline sidechains, nested delegation

[vivekchand]

Context

Claude Code is the highest-fanout runtime we support — memory + observed data confirm sessions with 20+ Agent/Task calls in this repo alone (top-level pendingWorkflowCount and pendingBackgroundAgentCount counters prove the harness tracks concurrent spawns).

Today the transcript viewer shows the parent turn with a single collapsed "Task" tool chip — the child's actual work (thinking, tools, turns) is never inlined. Users have to jump to the Subagents modal and open a second transcript. Nested delegation collapses entirely.

Substrate

• Parent JSONL: ~/.claude/projects/<cwd-slug>/<session-uuid>.jsonl
• Sub-agent JSONLs: <parent-dir>/<parent-uuid>/subagents/agent-*.jsonl, one file per child (../clawmetry-pro/clawmetry_pro/adapters/claude_code.py:78, :199)
• Meta: <parent-dir>/<parent-uuid>/subagents/agent-<uuid>.meta.json — has description, agentType

Sub-agent model

Invoked via the Task tool (legacy) or the newer Agent tool. Context passed = the caller's input.prompt string. Reply comes back as a tool_result whose text is the child's final message. Child linkage back to parent via parentUuid, logicalParentUuid, sourceToolAssistantUUID, sourceToolUseID, isSidechain: true.

subagent_type: "fork" inherits the parent's full context (verified in Anthropic Agent tool docs).

Workflow model

The Workflow tool persists a workflow script; each agent it fans out shows up as a normal Task/Agent tool_use in the parent, plus its own sidechain file. No separate DAG table. Reconstruct DAG by grouping sidechains by sourceToolAssistantUUID.

Mode + approvals

• Mode: {"type":"permission-mode","permissionMode":"default|acceptEdits|plan|bypassPermissions"} on every session, plus a per-turn permissionMode field on turns. bypassPermissions == YOLO. Separate mode events (normal/plan) reflect Plan Mode toggles mid-session.
• Approvals: no discrete permission_request record. A tool_use followed by a tool_result = approved. A tool_use followed by a user message with toolDenialKind and no tool_result = denied. Denial reasons appear as top-level toolDenialKind, refusedUserMessageUuid. Model refusals appear as apiRefusalCategory / apiRefusalExplanation.
• Edit-approve: capture as edit_diff when a second tool_use appears with different args after the same sourceToolUseID (see OSS-02 for schema).

Deliverable

Implement iter_replay_events(session_id) → Iterator[ReplayEvent] for the Claude family adapter (the family adapter is in OSS — Pro's claude_code.py extends it).

Output events per the canonical schema (OSS-01):

• mode.changed on every permission-mode / mode event
• llm.call / llm.response / thinking / tool.call / tool.result for the normal event stream
• agent.spawn on every Task/Agent tool_use — payload includes description, subagent_type, prompt, child_session_id (from enumerating subagents/agent-*.jsonl and matching sourceToolAssistantUUID)
• agent.return when the child's tool_result lands, with token_count, duration_ms, final_message_summary
• workflow.start / workflow.stage / workflow.end when the Workflow tool is invoked — payload includes the workflow name + phases from the script's meta block
• approval.requested / approval.decided per the OSS-02 mapping rules

Acceptance

• 3 recorded fixtures replay in the new UI:
  1. A session with ≥1 Task spawn (child renders inline, expandable)
  2. A session with a Workflow fanout ≥5 agents (workflow swimlane renders above the transcript)
  3. A session with nested delegation depth ≥2 (child spawns grandchild — indent tree renders correctly)
• pendingBackgroundAgentCount from the parent JSONL is surfaced as a workflow badge
• Mode chip shows the correct value for a bypassPermissions fixture (red YOLO)
• Approvals rail shows denied approvals with toolDenialKind as decision_reason

Depends on

• OSS-01 (schema + endpoint + renderer skeleton)
• OSS-02 (mode + approvals ingest + UI wiring)

Gotchas

• Sidechain 40:1 fanout — enumerate lazily on the endpoint side; do not eagerly parse all sidechain JSONLs at ingest time. Store a child_session_ids: [] reference on the parent; parse-on-expand.
• sourceToolAssistantUUID linking — the ONLY reliable way to tie a sidechain to the exact tool_use that spawned it. parentUuid chain within one file is not enough.
• fork subagents inherit context — the child's first message is not the entire history; the UI should NOT re-render the parent context when opening a fork child.

References

• Substrate + linking: ../clawmetry-pro/clawmetry_pro/adapters/claude_code.py:78-90, :199-210, :642-644
• Existing Task cost-split logic: routes/sessions.py:1308 (query_cost_split_with_subagents), :4486 (query_events_with_subagents)
• run_ledger.parent_task_id: clawmetry/local_store.py:545
• Depth-1 grouping bug (nested spawns collapse): routes/sessions.py:2984 (api_delegation_tree)

[vivekchand]

Hi @vivekchand! Took a careful look at the Claude Code mapper spec and the codebase. Here's the plan:

The problem
The session replay UI (/api/replay-tree) is live but returns empty turns/workflows for every Claude Code session because iter_replay_events for the Claude Code family has not been implemented — the JSONL is never mapped to canonical ReplayEvent rows in DuckDB.

Context note — OSS-01 is done
clawmetry/replay_schema.py (line 1+), the replay_events DuckDB table (local_store.py:1196), the /api/replay-tree/<id> endpoint (routes/sessions.py:2984), and the renderer skeleton (app.js:26233) are all already in main. The only missing piece in the OSS stack is this mapper.

Approach

1. New file clawmetry/adapters/claude_code_replay.py — implements iter_replay_events(session_id, project_dir) → Iterator[ReplayEvent], following the pattern of clawmetry/adapters/openclaw.py. Core dispatch loop over each JSONL line (after normalising with the existing _translate_claude_cli_event in sync.py:4103):

   • type == "permission-mode" → KIND_MODE_CHANGED (replay_schema.py:48), payload.permission = obj["permissionMode"]
   • type == "assistant" with tool_use.name in {"Task", "Agent"} → KIND_AGENT_SPAWN; resolve child_session_id from the sidechain index (step 2); set parent_span_id = None (top-level spawn)
   • tool_result for a spawn call → KIND_AGENT_RETURN with token_count, duration_ms
   • type == "user" with toolDenialKind → KIND_APPROVAL_DECIDED, approval.status = "denied", approval.decision_reason = obj["toolDenialKind"]
   • tool_use.name == "Workflow" → KIND_WORKFLOW_START; parse meta.name + meta.phases from input.script via regex (the export const meta = {...} literal at the top of every workflow script)
   • type == "thinking" content blocks → KIND_THINKING
   • Remaining assistant / user → KIND_LLM_RESPONSE / KIND_LLM_CALL

2. Lazy sidechain index — built once at the top of iter_replay_events:

   • subagents_dir = project_dir / session_id / "subagents"
   • For each agent-*.jsonl, read only the first line and extract sourceToolAssistantUUID
   • Build {sourceToolAssistantUUID: sidechain_stem} dict — O(N) first-line reads, not full parses
   • Used in step 1 to populate agent.spawn.payload.child_session_id (the cross-link the renderer needs for lazy child expansion)

3. Wire into sync daemon — after the existing Claude Code sidechain loop at sync.py:5202, call iter_replay_events and batch-write to DuckDB via local_store.get_store().upsert_replay_events(rows). The companion upsert_replay_events writer sits naturally next to the existing query_replay_events reader at local_store.py:8033.

Test plan

• clawmetry/tests/test_claude_code_replay.py: synthesise a minimal in-memory JSONL fixture (one parent turn + one Task spawn + matching sidechain file with sourceToolAssistantUUID), run iter_replay_events, assert KIND_AGENT_SPAWN and KIND_AGENT_RETURN events appear with correct parent_span_id / child_session_id
• Manual smoke: curl /api/replay-tree/<session-id> on a real Claude Code session that has subagents should return turns[*].delegations non-empty once the sync daemon has run a cycle

Estimated change
~200 lines across 3 files: clawmetry/adapters/claude_code_replay.py (new, ~160 lines), clawmetry/sync.py (~20 lines), clawmetry/local_store.py (~15 lines for the upsert writer).

This one's at the boundary of what I'm comfortable autonomously shipping — the sourceToolAssistantUUID sidechain matching is fiddly (40:1 fanout ratio is common; a wrong edge silently puts a child under the wrong parent in the delegation tree with no visible error), and full UI acceptance depends on OSS-02 (PR #4857) landing first. Leaving the detailed plan here for your review — if you want me to proceed, comment bot-go and I'll pick it up next run.

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[vivekchand]

Re-verified against origin/main (4c192fe, 2026-09-12). Still not implemented — leaving open.

• No clawmetry/adapters/claude_code_replay.py (or any Claude-Code-specific replay mapper) exists in the tree.
• git grep -n "iter_replay_events" across clawmetry/, routes/ turns up only comments/placeholders (local_store.py:1768, :14930; app.js:30583; trace_capture.py:292; trace_viewer.py:160,162; routes/sessions.py:3656; routes/tracing.py:22,901) — none of them a real implementation for any runtime, Claude Code included.
• No upsert_replay_events writer exists in local_store.py for a mapper to call.
• Confirms the schema/endpoint/renderer skeleton from Session replay: canonical schema + replay_events table + /api/replay-tree endpoint + renderer skeleton #4813 (clawmetry/replay_schema.py, the replay_events table, routes/sessions.py:3651 api_replay_tree) are in main as the prior plan-only comment (2026-08-15) said, but the mapper itself has not been started.

Leaving open, no state change.

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