This matrix compares the members of the Session analytics category: tools that turn what your coding agents already record into searchable history, cost reports, and audits. The category now has two members: agentsview, the broad retrospective archive, and ctx, the search-and-attribution CLI; the live-observation cells remain empty, and the gap is named in prose below until a note earns them a column. Everything below was verified against live sources on 2026-09-13.
The category question is still retrospective archive versus live observation: agentsview answers what did my agents do and cost across every tool I run, ctx answers where did this line of code come from, and nobody in the category yet answers what is my agent doing right now.
Legend: ✓ supported, ✗ not supported, ~ partial or conditional, ? not verified as of the date above. Each column links to the full research note; every cell traces to a source cited there or in the references.
The matrix #
| Feature | agentsview | ctx |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | local session indexer, web UI + CLI + desktop | local session search CLI with a paid blame-attribution add-on |
| Deployment | local daemon, Docker, optional PostgreSQL push for teams | single-binary CLI install, agent-callable skill |
| Open source | ✓ MIT | ✓ Apache-2.0 core, pro add-on paid |
| Agents covered | 60+ formats auto-discovered (Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, Copilot, Cursor, Zed, OpenCode, and more) | ~ major agents documented (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Pi, OpenCode, and more), full count unstated |
| Token cost reporting | ✓ per-model pricing catalog, seconds over months of sessions | ✗ |
| Search | ✓ FTS5 full text, semantic search opt-in | ✓ cross-agent message and tool-call search, subagent and fork aware |
| Provenance | ✗ | ✓ ctx pro maps a line, file, commit, or PR to the session that produced it |
| Live observation | ✗ retrospective only, parses files already written | ✗ retrospective only |
| Team features | ✓ PostgreSQL push, machine-labeled sync, S3 roots, versioned exports | a “For Teams” offering exists, details unpublished |
| Privacy posture | local-first, one anonymous ping by default, disableable | local-first, attribution refuses data not on the machine |
| Pricing | free, MIT, no accounts | free core, ctx pro paid at $20 USD/month, 14-day trial |
Reading the matrix #
The live-observation row is still where the category is incomplete: both members are retrospective readers of files agents already wrote, and the hook-based dashboards that would fill the empty cells have not yet earned notes under the citation standard. The second row worth reading is provenance: ctx pro’s blame attribution is the only cell in the category that answers “which session wrote this”, which agentsview deliberately leaves to cost and history questions.
Token cost reporting is the row that pays for the tool: harness-native cost views reset and see only their own sessions, while a pre-indexed store answers multi-tool, multi-month questions in seconds. An earlier version of the agentsview docs benchmarked its reports at 84 to 223 times faster than ad-hoc parsing (calling that an upper bound); the current docs have dropped that benchmark entirely, so the row should be read as “fast because pre-indexed”, with no vendor number left to lean on. The docs’ usage JSON contract now sits at schema version 6, so scripts consuming those reports should expect breaking churn.
Breadth of coverage is agentsview’s moat: roughly 60 supported sources against a field of single-agent tools, which matters because most practitioners now run two or three harnesses at once. ctx’s moat is different: agent-facing retrieval, where the consumer of the search is your next session rather than you.
Choosing from the matrix #
- Running three or more different coding agents and wanting one private history and cost view: agentsview.
- Wanting your agents to recall why code exists, from the session that wrote it: ctx, with its pro gating and self-reported numbers accepted.
- Needing to see what an agent is doing right now: not this category yet; use a harness-native view or watch for a live-observation note.
- Single-agent users: your harness’s built-in usage views are probably enough.
Changes #
- 2026-08-30 - Created as the Session analytics category’s companion matrix, a single-column scaffold with the live-observation gap named in prose.
- 2026-09-05 - Extended from one to two columns with ctx.
- 2026-09-06 - Updated the ctx cell for its published pro pricing.
- 2026-09-08 - Dropped the agentsview benchmark claim from the prose after the tool’s docs removed it entirely.
- 2026-09-13 - Added the agentsview usage-output schema version 6 churn note to the reading prose.
See also #
- Executions Feature Matrix - the trigger-and-run layer whose runs these tools observe
- Model Selection for Coding Tasks - the per-token economics these reports feed
- Context Management Patterns - the context costs the token reports make visible
References #
https://github.com/kenn-io/agentsview - the repository, supported agents, architecture, and license for the agentsview column
https://www.agentsview.io/docs/token-usage/ - the cost computation, benchmark caveats, and undercount disclosures
https://ctx.rs/pro - the ctx column: blame attribution and its citation model
https://code.claude.com/docs/en/costs - the harness-native cost views that define the category’s baseline