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

Who Should Read

A developer who switches between Claude Code and Codex and is tired of re-explaining context in every new session

Core Mechanics

• One workstream holds both chats
  • ctx binds a Claude conversation ID and a Codex conversation ID to one workstream.
  • Each internal ctx session is tied to the exact conversation it came from.
• No jumping to the newest chat
  • Later pulls stay on the bound conversation.
  • They never switch to the most recent chat on disk.
• Branch to split context
  • ctx branch seeds a new workstream from another one's current saved state.
  • It shares no future transcript pulls and doesn't hijack the source conversation.
• Local SQLite only
  • No API keys or hosted service; just SQLite and local files.
  • Saved workstreams, sessions and entries are indexed for fast ctx search.
• Pin and exclude control loads
  • Pinned entries always load, even in compressed mode.
  • Excluded entries stay searchable but aren't passed to the model.
• -pull decides whether history is included
  • ctx start feature-audit --pull imports the current conversation's existing context.
  • Without --pull, it records from that point only and doesn't backfill.

Community Reactions

• Thinking doesn't carry over, one comment argues
  • A commenter said neither vendor exposes raw thinking tokens, so they can't be ported.
  • Cross-agent resume thus keeps the visible transcript but loses the reasoning, they argued.
• Prompt caching objection
  • One commenter noted caching doesn't work across models and asked how this beats handing a PR to another harness for review.
  • Another asked how tool/MCP calls and sub-agent results are normalized across providers.
• Experience: rarely using /resume
  • One commenter said they never resume, since they finish a change, document it, and start a new session.
  • Another asked for a /last command to resume the latest session.
• Requests for sharing and a similar tool
  • Commenters asked about export/import and sharing streams with remote users.
  • One pointed to a similar tool, hydra (github.com/saadnvd1/hydra).

How to Apply

• Install ctx on a sample repo
  • Today, git clone it, run ./setup.sh, and run ctx start my-stream --pull in a small project.
  • In Claude Code, use /ctx start my-stream --pull.
• Use resume across sessions
  • When alternating Claude Code and Codex on one feature, continue with ctx resume <name>.
  • Add --compress if token cost matters.
• Branch for experiments
  • When trying two designs, split with ctx branch source new-name.
  • Later chats don't mix.
• Prune noisy entries with ctx curate
  • For long workstreams, open ctx curate, pin key entries with p, and exclude noise with x.
  • Original Claude/Codex chats are not modified.

Try It

# Run in a terminal (in Claude Code start with /ctx; in Codex/terminal use ctx)

git clone https://github.com/dchu917/ctx.git
cd ctx
./setup.sh
ctx start feature-audit --pull
ctx list --this-repo
ctx search dataset download
ctx resume feature-audit --compress
ctx branch feature-audit feature-audit-v2
ctx curate feature-audit

Terminology

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Related Resources

• https://github.com/dchu917/ctx
• https://github.com/saadnvd1/hydra