[RFE] Ability to append output to log file
Status Fixed / completed
Maintainer reply None cached
Activity 7 comments · opened Aug 13, 2025 · closed Aug 18, 2025
Environment
- Platform (select one):
- [x] Anthropic API
- [ ] AWS Bedrock
- [ ] Google Vertex AI
- [ ] Other: <!-- specify -->
- Claude CLI version: 1.0.77 (Claude Code)
- Operating System: Windows 11
- Terminal: WSL2 bash
Description
I want to let Claude Code run background tasks but I often find myself missing out on activity that scroll past the terminal buffer.
What I tried
wsl.exe -d Ubuntu bash -lc "script -a claude.log -c claude"retains an interactive console and logs to a file with colorswsl.exe -d Ubuntu bash -lc "fifo=\$(mktemp -u); mkfifo \"\$fifo\"; sed -r 's/\x1B\[[0-9;?]*[ -/]*[@-~]//g' < \"\$fifo\" >> claude.log & spid=\$!; script -qf \"\$fifo\" -c 'claude'; wait \$spid; rm -f \"\$fifo\""retains an interactive console and strips colors out before logging to a file
Both approach work, but unfortunately the animation gets logged which means that log file output is extremely verbose to a point of being useless.
Please provide a built-in feature for append the output to a file (with and without colors getting stripped out) in a way that does not log the animation but rather only the final result.
7 Comments
Found 3 possible duplicate issues:
This issue will be automatically closed as a duplicate in 3 days.
🤖 Generated with Claude Code
This feature request is different. I'm asking for realtime logging as Claude Code is running. I don't want to invoke a command to trigger an export to a log file every time.
I build this Python script which seems to do what I want. You can invoke it like this:
wsl.exe -d Ubuntu bash -lc "python3 claude.py --log claude.log -- claude --dangerously-skip-permissions"claude.zip
I've been unable to make this work without the screen "stuttering". It seems that when PTY is used, Claude redraws the entire console every time a line is added. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like this is fixable outside of Claude's codebase...
I've noticed that there are multiple complaints of the TUI redrawing the entire screen over and over again:
https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/1854
https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/769
and probably others. Fixing this issue would have an indirect effect of solving this issue as well as it would enable us to log Claude's output using external tools.
I'm going to close this issue in favor of https://github.com/daaain/claude-code-log
This issue has been automatically locked since it was closed and has not had any activity for 7 days. If you're experiencing a similar issue, please file a new issue and reference this one if it's relevant.