Claude Context Admin: A Control Panel for Claude Code

A few months ago I wrote about symlinking Claude Code's memory into Obsidian. It worked, but it was a workaround: it showed my memories and none of the rest of what Claude loads. I wanted something cleaner.

Not being able to see what Claude knows is also the first wall people hit when they move from a chat app to Claude Code in the terminal. Memories, CLAUDE.md files, skills, plugins, MCP servers, and hooks are scattered across hidden folders on your machine.

Claude Context Admin puts all of it in one window. It's a free, open-source app that shows everything Claude Code loads, in every project, and helps you keep it clean. No symlinks, no digging through ~/.claude.

Memories for one project, plus the ones Claude loads everywhere

Everything Claude Sees

Pick a project and every page shows what Claude sees there: that project's memories, the ones that load everywhere, instructions, skills, plugins, MCP servers, and hooks. Filter chips narrow it to global, project, or plugin.

Memories open like notes. You edit the title, the one-line summary Claude reads at the start of every session, and the details. Rename a memory and its links and the MEMORY.md index update with it. Every version is kept, whether you changed it or Claude did, so you can diff and restore.

Memory editor with links and history

What Loads Here

This is the view I wanted most. For any project, it lists every source Claude loads at the start of a session and how many tokens each one costs. MEMORY.md shows how close it is to its limit (only about the first 200 lines load). CLAUDE.md shows its imports. Plugins and MCP servers show their weight.

Click any row to jump to the files behind it, and use the back arrow to return.

Everything Claude loads at the start of a session, by source

A Review Queue for the Mess

AutoDream keeps memories tidier, but it doesn't catch everything. The Review page collects the upkeep in one list:

• broken links between memories
• the same note copied into several projects
• memories Claude hasn't opened in months
• MCP servers and plugins you never use
• hooks pointing at scripts that no longer exist
• memories stranded when a repo was renamed
• instructions written for older models: stacked ALL-CAPS rules, "think step by step", retired model names

Each card shows the evidence and the exact change, and nothing happens until you accept it.

Review: what to fix, with the evidence

Claude Helps, You Decide

An optional Claude Code plugin gives Claude read access to all of this and lets it suggest changes, like merging two duplicate memories or trimming a bloated MEMORY.md. Suggestions land in the same Review queue with the exact text they'd write. The plugin never changes anything on its own.

See How It Connects

The map draws every memory and its links across projects. It's the fun view, but it's also the fastest way to spot an orphaned note or a cluster that should really be one.

How memories connect across projects

Private and Local

Everything runs on your machine. The app doesn't connect to the internet, doesn't need an account, and doesn't collect anything.

It also stays away from your secrets. It never reads or shows MCP keys, and when you add a server, your keys live in environment variables instead of being written into a config file. Plugin and MCP changes go through Claude Code's own claude command, so your setup stays exactly how Claude Code expects it.

If you change something by mistake, every edit can be undone, and deleted files go to the Trash. The Mac app is signed and notarized by Apple, and the code is open source on GitHub if you or your security team want to look under the hood.

Try It

On a Mac:

brew install --cask johnccarroll/tap/claude-context-admin

On Linux, or if you'd rather use your browser (Windows is on the way):

npm install -g claude-context-admin

Then run cca. To let Claude help:

claude plugin marketplace add johnccarroll/claude-context-admin
claude plugin install context-admin@context-admin

The source is at github.com/johnccarroll/claude-context-admin.

You can't maintain context you can't see. Now you can.

Screenshots use made-up demo data. Claude Context Admin is an independent project, not affiliated with Anthropic.