Comparison
sitrep vs plain VS Code + CLAUDE.md
The most honest comparison on this site, because the alternative is free and you already have it: your editor, a file tree, and hand-maintained context files. For one or two projects you touch daily, that setup is genuinely enough - and this page starts by saying so.
Disclosure: this page is written by the maker of sitrep. Read the framing with that in mind - and note that where the honest answer is "you don't need a tool", this page says so.
The one-sentence difference
The DIY setup stores project state in files and in your head; you are the extraction layer. sitrep is an AI project status dashboard: a state layer on top of the markdown your AI agents already generate - the status lines, phase headings, decision tables and due dates scattered across your repos, parsed and shown as one overview instead of re-read one file at a time.
Note what the DIY setup's own centerpiece is for: CLAUDE.md files brief the agent at session start. Nothing in that loop briefs you. The gap sitrep fills is the human-side one - and it reads your CLAUDE.md files along with everything else.
Side by side
| sitrep | VS Code + CLAUDE.md | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | AI project status dashboard - a passive state layer over existing files | Your editor, a file tree, and whatever discipline you bring |
| Cross-project overview | The core feature - every project in one inbox, newest activity first | None - one window per workspace; state across projects lives in your head |
| Where project state lives | Extracted from the docs: status lines, phase headings, decision tables, due dates | In the files, unextracted - you re-read plans and scroll history to find it |
| Re-entry after weeks away | Open the inbox: what moved, what stalled, what is waiting on you | Open the folder, grep, scroll, reconstruct - the first fifteen minutes of the session |
| Who the context serves | You - CLAUDE.md and friends serve the agent; sitrep is the human-side view | The agent - CLAUDE.md briefs the next session, not the person opening the repo |
| Staleness | Surfaced - what a doc claims shown beside when it last changed | Invisible - a stale plan looks exactly like a current one |
| Maintenance cost | None - it parses what agents already write | Ongoing - CLAUDE.md files stay useful only as long as you keep editing them |
| Price | Commercial desktop app, in development | Free - you already have it |
| Local-first | Yes - no account, no network, no telemetry by default | Yes |
When the DIY setup is enough
- You run one or two projects and touch them most days - the state fits in your head because it never has time to fall out.
- Your agents produce little markdown beyond code - there is not much state to lose track of.
- You genuinely maintain your CLAUDE.md and plan files, and the discipline holds. Some people's does.
- Adding any tool feels heavier than the problem. That instinct is usually right - respect it until the problem grows.
If that is you, keep the free setup. sitrep's zero-adoption-cost promise cuts both ways: because it changes nothing about your files, there is also nothing to prepare before adopting it later.
Where the DIY setup stops scaling
- Projects multiply. Five active repos means five heads' worth of state in one head; re-entry starts costing the first fifteen minutes of every session, and by Friday the fragments add up to a missing day.
- Agent output outgrows reading. A few weeks of Claude Code, Cursor or Codex leaves hundreds of plans, analyses and decision docs - more state than any file tree communicates.
- The docs start lying. A plan says phase 2 while the repo moved on; a decision was superseded three files later. Nothing in an editor flags it - staleness surfacing needs a layer that knows what the docs claim and when everything last moved.
- Decisions go missing. "Waiting on you" is a state no file tree shows - it has to be extracted from the documents and surfaced, or it silently ages.
Adding sitrep changes nothing
This is the shortest migration section ever written, because there is no migration: you keep VS Code, you keep your CLAUDE.md files, you keep every workflow you have. sitrep points at the folders you already use and parses what is already in them - no import, no frontmatter, no restructuring. If it earns nothing at a glance, you delete it and your files never knew it was there. Theconventions it readsare the ones your agents already write.
sitrep is in development, launching first on macOS. Local-first - your files never leave your machine.