trawl

Trawl the urls, file paths, commands, and plans out of your AI coding chats. It reads your Claude Code and Codex CLI sessions and drops the good bits into fzf. One key, fuzzy-pick, enter opens a url or copies a command, plan, or path.

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What it is

• A tiny CLI that reads your Claude Code and Codex session transcripts and drops the useful bits into fzf. No daemon, no config.
• Commands the agent gave you to run, lifted from its messages.
• Plans it proposed: Claude's plan-mode plan, Codex's Plan item.
• Urls and paths from across the chat.
• Enter opens a url; everything else copies. ctrl-y always copies.
• Scoped to the chat in the current directory. Any terminal, tmux or not.

Two commands

One package, two binaries:

	what it is	works inside a running chat?
trawl	the menu. Run it in a terminal, or bind a shell / tmux key to it.	only via tmux (below)
trawl-global	an OS-level launcher. Bind one key; it pops the menu over any app, even a running Codex/Claude TUI.	yes

Use trawl day to day; reach for trawl-global when you want the global hotkey.

Requirements

• fzf for the menu UI. Required, on PATH.
• Node 18+.

Install

npm install -g B33pBeeps/trawl     # installs both `trawl` and `trawl-global`

Launch it

Three ways to fire trawl. They differ in whether they work while a chat is running (a chat's TUI owns the keyboard, so only a layer above it, tmux or the desktop, can pop over it) and in which directory they read.

method	works in-chat?	reads the dir of
terminal / shell key	no, only at the prompt	your shell
tmux popup key	yes, if chats run in tmux	the pane
trawl-global	yes	the focused terminal

Terminal (shell prompt)

Fires at the prompt, like fzf's Ctrl-R.

zsh, in ~/.zshrc:

__trawl() { command trawl </dev/tty >/dev/tty 2>&1; zle reset-prompt }
zle -N __trawl
bindkey '^X' __trawl

bash, in ~/.bashrc:

bind -x '"\C-x": trawl'

tmux popup

Works inside a chat if you run Codex/Claude in tmux. tmux catches the key above the program. In ~/.tmux.conf:

bind -n C-x display-popup -E -w 75% -h 60% -d "#{pane_current_path}" "trawl"

-n makes Ctrl-X global across panes (taken from vim etc.). Drop it and use your prefix (prefix then x) if you'd rather keep Ctrl-X.

System hotkey (trawl-global)

Bind one desktop key to trawl-global. It pops the menu in a floating window over any app, even a running chat. Use Super+X (a global Ctrl+X gets stolen from every app).

• It renders in whatever terminal you already have open (or any installed one). Force one with TRAWL_TERMINAL=foot if you like.
• It scopes to the focused terminal's directory: trawl-global asks your compositor which window is focused and reads that terminal's cwd. Works out of the box on Hyprland, sway, X11, KDE, macOS, and Windows.
• GNOME (Wayland) blocks focus info for unprivileged apps, so it needs one extension: Window Calls Extended (window-calls-extended@hseliger.eu). trawl-global calls its FocusPID D-Bus method to find the focused window. Install it, then log out and back in once (Wayland won't load a freshly-installed extension into the running shell):

  gnome-extensions enable window-calls-extended@hseliger.eu   # after install + relogin

  Without it, a desktop hotkey falls back to your home dir — run trawl-global from the terminal (where the cwd is already right) instead. X11 GNOME doesn't need the extension (xdotool works there).

OS / desktop	hotkey → command trawl-global
Linux · GNOME	Settings → Keyboard → View and Customize Shortcuts → Custom Shortcuts → + → Command trawl-global, set Super+X
Linux · Hyprland	bind = SUPER, X, exec, trawl-global
Linux · KDE	System Settings → Shortcuts → Custom Shortcuts → Command/URL → trawl-global
Linux · sway / i3	bindsym $mod+x exec trawl-global
macOS	skhd (cmd - x : trawl-global), Hammerspoon, or Raycast → trawl-global
Windows	PowerToys or AutoHotkey hotkey → trawl-global

If the desktop can't find trawl-global by name, symlink it onto a standard path:

ln -sf "$(command -v trawl-global)" ~/.local/bin/trawl-global
ln -sf "$(command -v trawl)" ~/.local/bin/trawl

In the menu

key	action
enter	open a url · copy a command / plan / path
ctrl-y	copy the selection
alt-u / alt-p / alt-c / alt-l	filter to urls / paths / cmds / plans
alt-a	show all
type	fuzzy-filter

No agent session for the directory and the menu just says not in a chat.

The full menu — every catch from the current chat, tagged by type:

Type to fuzzy-filter across every type at once:

Or alt-c / alt-p / alt-u / alt-l to scope to one type:

CLI

trawl                 # menu for the current directory
trawl --cwd <dir>     # menu for a specific directory

Config

• TRAWL_CLIP=native copies with wl-copy / xclip / pbcopy instead of OSC52. Default is OSC52 (an escape to the terminal) so nothing lingers in the background to block input or keep a popup window open.

License

Personal project. MIT - use it, fork it, do whatever.