Wake

wake

The trail you leave behind.

Wake records your terminal sessions—commands, outputs, git context—so Claude Code can see what you've been doing.

Installation

curl -sSf https://raw.githubusercontent.com/joemckenney/wake/main/install.sh | sh

Setup

Add to ~/.zshrc or ~/.bashrc:

eval "$(wake init zsh)"   # or: wake init bash

Add the MCP server to Claude Code:

claude mcp add --transport stdio --scope user wake-mcp -- wake-mcp

Usage

The Workflow

1. Start — wake shell
2. Work — builds, deploys, debugging
3. Ask Claude — it sees your terminal history, no copy-pasting

Example

$ wake shell
$ kubectl logs deploy/api-server | tail -100
  # wall of errors
$ kubectl describe pod api-server-7f8b9
  # more stuff you don't have time to read

> You: Summarize what's happening with the API server > > Claude: The API server is crash-looping. From the logs, it's failing to connect to Redis on startup—connection refused to redis:6379. The pod events show 5 restarts in the last 10 minutes. Looks like the Redis service might be down.

CLI Reference

wake shell              # Start recorded session
wake status             # Current session info
wake log                # Recent commands
wake search "error"     # Search history
wake dump               # Export session as markdown
wake annotate "note"    # Add a breadcrumb for context
wake prune              # Delete old sessions
wake prune --dry-run    # Preview what would be deleted
wake prune --force      # Skip confirmation
wake prune --older-than 7  # Override retention period (days)
wake update             # Update to latest version
wake update --check     # Check for updates without installing
wake llm status         # Check model status (downloaded/loaded)
wake llm download       # Pre-download model (optional, auto-downloads on first use)
wake llm clean          # Remove orphaned models from previous versions
wake llm clean --dry-run   # Preview what would be deleted

MCP Tools

Claude Code uses these tools via the MCP server:

| Tool | Purpose | |------|---------| | wake_status | Current session info | | wake_list_commands | List recent commands with metadata and summaries (no full output) | | wake_get_output | Fetch full output for specific command IDs | | wake_log | Recent commands with truncated output | | wake_search | Search command history | | wake_dump | Export session as markdown | | wake_annotate | Add notes to the session |

The wake_list_commands + wake_get_output pattern enables tiered retrieval—Claude sees command metadata first, then fetches full output only when needed. This reduces context usage for long sessions.

Configuration

Create ~/.wake/config.toml:

[retention]
days = 21      # Delete sessions older than this (default: 21)

[output]
max_mb = 5     # Max output size per command in MB (default: 5)

[summarization]
enabled = false  # Disable LLM summarization (default: true)
min_bytes = 500  # Minimum output size to trigger summarization (default: 1024)

Or use environment variables (take precedence over config file):

export WAKE_RETENTION_DAYS=14
export WAKE_MAX_OUTPUT_MB=10

Old sessions are automatically pruned on each wake shell start.

LLM Summarization

Wake automatically summarizes command outputs using a local LLM (Qwen3-0.6B). Summaries appear in wake_list_commands output, helping Claude quickly understand what happened without reading full output.

Enabled by default. On first run, the model (~380MB) downloads automatically.

• CPU-friendly — The small model runs efficiently without a GPU
• Privacy — All inference happens locally, nothing leaves your machine
• Manual download — wake llm download to pre-download the model
• Disable — Set enabled = false in config if you don't want summarization

How it works:

1. When a command completes with output > min_bytes, it's queued for summarization
2. A background task runs inference on the local model
3. Summaries are stored in the database and exposed via MCP tools

GPU acceleration (build from source):

The default build and pre-built binaries use CPU inference, which is fast enough for the small model. For faster inference on supported hardware, build with GPU features:

cargo build --release --features cuda   # NVIDIA (requires CUDA toolkit)
cargo build --release --features metal  # Apple Silicon

How It Works

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                            wake shell                               │
│                                                                     │
│  ┌───────────┐       ┌─────────────┐      ┌──────────────────────┐  │
│  │   Your    │  pty  │    Shell    │ hook │    Unix Socket       │  │
│  │  Terminal │◄─────►│  (zsh/bash) │─────►│  ~/.wake/sockets/*   │  │
│  └───────────┘       └─────────────┘      └──────────┬───────────┘  │
│        │                   │                         │              │
│        │                   │ stdout                  │ cmd events   │
│        │                   ▼                         ▼              │
│        │              ┌────────────────────────────────┐            │
│        │              │         Output Buffer          │            │
│        │              └───────────────┬────────────────┘            │
│        │                              │                             │
│        │                              ▼                             │
│        │                       ┌─────────────┐    ┌──────────────┐  │
│        │                       │  SQLite DB  │◄───│ LLM Summary  │  │
│        │                       │  ~/.wake/   │    │ (background) │  │
│        │                       └─────────────┘    └──────────────┘  │
└────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
         │                              ▲
         │ you                          │ reads
         ▼                              │
┌──────────────┐               ┌──────────────┐          ┌───────────┐
│   Human at   │               │   wake-mcp   │   mcp    │  Claude   │
│   Keyboard   │               │  MCP Server  │◄────────►│   Code    │
└──────────────┘               └──────────────┘          └───────────┘

Components

| Component | Purpose | | ------------ | -------------------------------------------------------------- | | wake shell | Spawns a PTY, captures all I/O, listens for hook events | | Shell hooks | Installed via wake init, notify wake when commands start/end | | Unix socket | IPC between shell hooks and the wake process | | SQLite DB | Stores sessions, commands, outputs, annotations, summaries | | LLM engine | Background task that summarizes command outputs locally | | wake-mcp | MCP server that exposes wake data to Claude Code |

Data Flow

1. wake shell spawns your shell inside a PTY and sets $WAKE_SESSION
2. Shell hooks fire on each command, sending metadata via Unix socket
3. PTY output is captured and associated with the current command
4. On command completion, exit code + output are written to SQLite
5. Large outputs are queued for LLM summarization in the background
6. Claude Code queries wake-mcp, which reads from the database

Constraints

• One session per shell — Each wake shell creates an isolated session
• Output truncation — Commands with >5MB output are truncated (configurable)
• Auto-cleanup — Sessions older than 21 days are automatically deleted (configurable)
• Local only — All data stays in ~/.wake/, nothing leaves your machine
• Shell support — Hooks work with zsh and bash (fish/other shells not yet supported)

Building from Source

git clone https://github.com/joemckenney/wake
cd wake
cargo build --release

# With GPU acceleration (optional)
cargo build --release --features cuda   # NVIDIA
cargo build --release --features metal  # Apple Silicon

License

MIT

Source & license

This open-source MCP server is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: joemckenney
• Source: joemckenney/wake
• License: MIT

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.