Shift Log

Save, view, and search coding agent conversation history, persisted as Git Notes.

Install

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/re-cinq/shift-log/master/scripts/install.sh | bash

# ...In a Git repo
shiftlog init --agent=<agent>

Where <agent> is claude (default), codex, copilot, gemini, or opencode.

Now work with your coding agent as you would normally. Whenever you or the agent commit, the conversation since the last commit will be attached to that commit as a Git Note.

Supported Agents

Agent	Init command	How it hooks in
Claude Code	shiftlog init (default)	.claude/settings.json hooks
Codex CLI	shiftlog init --agent=codex	Post-commit git hook
Copilot CLI	shiftlog init --agent=copilot	.github/hooks/shiftlog.json hook
Gemini CLI	shiftlog init --agent=gemini	.gemini/settings.json hooks
OpenCode	shiftlog init --agent=opencode	.opencode/plugins/shiftlog.js plugin

Usage

See what conversations you have:

shiftlog list

Search through past conversations:

shiftlog search "authentication"          # Text search
shiftlog search --agent claude --branch main  # Filter by metadata
shiftlog search "jwt" --regex --context 2     # Regex with context lines

Get a quick summary of a conversation:

shiftlog summarise        # Summarise HEAD conversation
shiftlog tldr HEAD~1      # Alias, works the same way
shiftlog tldr --focus="security"  # Prioritise security-related changes

Resume a past session:

shiftlog resume abc123    # By commit SHA
shiftlog resume HEAD~3    # By git ref

View in your browser:

shiftlog serve

Pull down conversations from a repo you cloned:

shiftlog sync pull

shiftlog vs Entire

	Entire	shiftlog
Funding	$60M seed round	Claude Code Max plan ($200/mo)
Staffing	12 engineers	An imbecile spec-driving while not really paying attention
Agents	Claude Code, Gemini CLI	Claude Code, Codex CLI, Copilot CLI, Gemini CLI, OpenCode
Storage	Custom checkpoints format	Standard Git Notes
Resume sessions	No	Yes
Web viewer	No	Yes
Rebase support	No	Yes
Open source	Yes	Yes

Why?

In order to understand how and why a commit was made, we need to see the conversation that led to it.

How It Works

Shiftlog uses Git Notes to attach conversations to commits, stored under refs/notes/shiftlog to keep git log clean. When you run shiftlog init, it sets up hooks so:

1. When the coding agent makes a commit, the conversation is saved automatically
2. When you make a commit during an agent session, it's saved too
3. When you push/pull, conversations sync with the remote

No extra steps needed during your normal workflow.

To view notes directly with git: git log --notes=shiftlog

Commands

Command	Description
shiftlog init	Initialize shiftlog in the current repo
shiftlog list	List commits with stored conversations
shiftlog search [query]	Search through stored conversations
shiftlog show [ref]	Show conversation history for a commit
shiftlog summarise [ref]	Summarise a conversation using your coding agent
shiftlog resume <commit>	Resume a coding agent session from a commit
shiftlog serve	Start the web visualization server
shiftlog doctor	Diagnose shiftlog configuration issues
shiftlog debug	Toggle debug logging
shiftlog sync push/pull	Sync conversation notes with remote
shiftlog remap	Remap orphaned notes to rebased commits

Requirements

• Git
• One of the supported coding agents (Claude Code, Codex CLI, Copilot CLI, Gemini CLI, or OpenCode)

Multi-Developer Sync

When multiple developers use shiftlog on the same repository, each person's conversation notes are synced automatically via git push/pull hooks. Notes from different developers are merged seamlessly because they typically annotate different commits.

If the remote notes ref has diverged (e.g. two developers pushed notes without pulling first), shiftlog sync push will reject the push and advise you to pull first:

shiftlog sync pull   # Fetches and merges remote notes
shiftlog sync push   # Now succeeds

In the rare case where two developers annotate the exact same commit SHA, both notes are preserved by concatenation — no data is lost.

Git Worktrees

Shiftlog is worktree-safe. If you use git worktree to work on multiple branches simultaneously, each worktree sees only the conversations for commits on its own branch. Hooks are shared across worktrees (as git requires), but shiftlog list and shiftlog show are scoped to the current HEAD.

Local Rebase

Conversation notes automatically follow commits when you rebase. During shiftlog init, the notes.rewriteRef git config is set to refs/notes/shiftlog, which tells git to remap notes to the new commit SHAs during rebase. No manual steps are needed.

If you initialized before this config was added, run shiftlog init again or set it manually:

git config notes.rewriteRef refs/notes/shiftlog

You can verify the config is set with shiftlog doctor.

GitHub Rebase Merge

When a PR is merged via GitHub's "Rebase and merge" strategy, the commits get new SHAs on the target branch. Since this happens server-side, git's notes.rewriteRef does not apply and notes remain keyed to the original (now-orphaned) commit SHAs.

Shiftlog handles this automatically. After you pull a rebase-merged PR, the post-merge hook runs shiftlog remap, which:

1. Finds notes on commits that are no longer on any branch (orphaned)
2. Uses git patch-id to match each orphaned commit to its rebased counterpart by diff content
3. Copies the note to the new commit SHA (the original note is also kept)

For this to work, the local feature branch must be deleted or pruned so the old commits become orphaned. If your GitHub repo is configured to auto-delete branches after merge, this happens naturally when you git pull with fetch.prune=true (or git fetch --prune). Otherwise, delete the branch manually first:

git branch -D feature-branch
shiftlog remap

You can also run shiftlog remap at any time — it reports how many notes were remapped and how many remain unmatched. Unmatched notes are left in place, not deleted.

Note: Remap works with GitHub's "Rebase and merge" strategy. It does not support "Squash and merge", which combines all commits into one new commit with no 1:1 mapping to copy notes from.

License

AI Native Application License (AINAL) — see LICENSE.