Show HN: Ctx – a /resume that works across Claude Code and Codex

ctx is a local SQLite-backed skill for Claude Code and Codex that stores context as a persistent workstream that can be continued across agent sessions. Each workstream can contain multiple sessions, notes, decisions, todos, and resume packs. It essentially functions as a /resume that can work across coding agents.

Here is a video of how it works: https://www.loom.com/share/5e558204885e4264a34d2cf6bd488117

I initially built ctx because I wanted to try a workstream that I started on Claude and continue it from Codex. Since then, I’ve added a few quality of life improvements, including the ability to search across previous workstreams, manually delete parts of the context with, and branch off existing workstreams.. I’ve started using ctx instead of the native ‘/resume’ in Claude/Codex because I often have a lot of sessions going at once, and with the lists that these apps currently give, it’s not always obvious which one is the right one to pick back up. ctx gives me a much clearer way to organize and return to the sessions that actually matter.

It’s simple to install after you clone the repo with one line: ./setup.sh, which adds the skill to both Claude Code and Codex. After that, you should be able to directly use ctx in your agent as a skill with ‘/ctx [command]’ in Claude and ‘ctx [command]’ in Codex.

A few things it does:

- Resume an existing workstream from either tool

- Pull existing context into a new workstream

- Keep stable transcript binding, so once a workstream is linked to a Claude or Codex conversation, it keeps following that exact session instead of drifting to whichever transcript file is newest

- Search for relevant workstreams

- Branch from existing context to explore different tasks in parallel

It’s intentionally local-first: SQLite, no API keys, and no hosted backend. I built it mainly for myself, but thought it would be cool to share with the HN community.

▲

buremba 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Since prompt caching won't work across different models, how is this approach better than dropping a PR for the other harnesses to review?

▲

dchu17 an hour ago | parent [-]

Sorry, I may be misunderstanding the question.

The way this works is that it stores workstreams and session state in a local SQLite DB, and links each ctx session to the exact local Claude Code and/or Codex raw session log it came from (also stored locally).

What do you mean by prompt caching?

▲

Wowfunhappy an hour ago | parent [-]

Prompt caching is done on the provider side. If you send two requests to a provider in short succession and the beginning of your second request is the same as your first (for example, because your second request is the continuation of an ongoing chat), the repeated tokens are much less expensive the second time.

Obviously, your tool does not provide this. But I think GP is undervaluing the UX advantages of having your conversation history.

	▲	buremba a few seconds ago \| parent [-]
		Yes that's it. I actually just ask codex/claude code to look up the session id when I want to resume sessions cross harness, it's just jsonl files locally so it can access the full conversation history when needed.

▲

t0mas88 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Have you considered making it possible to share a stream/context? As an export/import function.

	▲	rkuska 16 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I wrote a tool for myself to copy (and archive) the claude/codex conversations github.com/rkuska/carn
	▲	dchu17 an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		that's interesting, I hadn't at this point but this sounds potentially useful