Catch Up

Catch Up

Overview

Comprehensive project catch-up that summarizes recent activity, accomplishments, and context. Auto-detects time since last activity and presents relevant information.

When to Use

• Returning to a project after any time away
• Starting a new work session
• Recovering mid-session after interruption
• User says "catch up" or similar

Process

Step 1: Detect Last Activity

Check Claude Code project history for last session timestamp:

# Get project hash for current directory
PROJECT_DIR=$(pwd)
PROJECT_HASH=$(echo -n "$PROJECT_DIR" | sed 's/\//-/g' | sed 's/^-//')
PROJECT_PATH="$HOME/.claude/projects/$PROJECT_HASH"

# Find most recent session file
ls -t "$PROJECT_PATH"/*.jsonl 2>/dev/null | head -1

Calculate time elapsed since last activity.

Step 2: Confirm Time Range

Use AskUserQuestion to confirm scenario based on detected time:

| Time Elapsed | Suggested Range | Description | |--------------|-----------------|-------------| | 14 days | All history | Long absence |

Present with: "You were last here [X time] ago. Show [suggested range]?"

Options:

• Mid-session (4h)
• Daily (24h)
• This week (7d)
• This month (30d)
• Full history

Step 3: Gather Information (All Sources, Skip Unavailable)

3a. Project Context (for "What is this project?")

1. Read CLAUDE.md or README if exists
2. Analyze directory structure for project type
3. Extract project understanding from chat history

3b. Recently Modified Files

# Find files modified in time range, exclude noise
find . -type f -mtime - \
  -not -path "./.git/*" \
  -not -path "./node_modules/*" \
  -not -path "./__pycache__/*" \
  -not -name ".DS_Store" \
  -not -name "*.pyc" \
  2>/dev/null | head -50

3c. Git Commits (if available)

git log --oneline --since="" 2>/dev/null
git diff --stat HEAD~10 2>/dev/null | tail -20

3d. GitHub Activity (if gh CLI available and remote exists)

# Check if GitHub remote exists
git remote -v 2>/dev/null | grep github

# If yes, check PRs and issues
gh pr list --state all --limit 10 2>/dev/null
gh issue list --state all --limit 10 2>/dev/null

3e. Claude Code Chat History

Read from ~/.claude/projects// for sessions within time range. Parse JSONL for conversation summaries and key topics.

Step 4: Present Summary

Only include sections with actual content:

## Project: [name]
[1-2 sentence description from docs or inferred]

## What's Been Accomplished
[Key milestones/features from docs and history]

## Recent Focus (last [time range])
[Only show sections with content:]
- **Files:** X modified, Y created - [highlight largest changes]
- **Commits:** Z commits - [highlight key changes]
- **Conversations:** N sessions - [highlight key topics]
- **GitHub:** M PRs, K issues - [highlight activity]

## Highlights
- [Most significant change #1]
- [Most significant change #2]
- [Most significant change #3]

Step 5: Offer Drill-Down

Use AskUserQuestion with options:

• "Show file changes"
• "Show commit details"
• "Show conversation summaries"
• "Show GitHub activity"
• "I'm caught up"

Loop until user selects "I'm caught up".

Common Mistakes

• Showing empty sections (GitHub when no remote exists)
• Not detecting project type from code structure
• Missing chat history due to wrong project hash
• Overwhelming with too much detail in initial summary

Source & license

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

• Author: letitbk
• Source: letitbk/claude-academic-setup
• License: MIT

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