Project Sentinel

Mission control for long Claude Code runs: context, run progress and the prompt cache at a glance, Autopilot handoffs before the context fills up, guardrails, and a calm view of what Claude did. For the terminal CLI and for local sessions in Claude Desktop's Code tab.

Project Sentinel was called Control Room until 1.4.0; its panel still is, and /cr still opens it. An existing install moves over by itself (see Coming from Control Room).

One plugin gives you:

• a calm status bar above the prompt, a mission HUD: what the run is doing or waiting for, in words, and only what needs a look; below it the run's instruments (work, context, the prompt cache, the plan's five-hour usage), each its own shape; above it, while subagents run, one line per agent
• the Control Room panel, docked beside the conversation
• Autopilot (Context Autopilot): Claude writes handoff notes, the context is cleared, and Claude carries on in a fresh one, before this one fills up; then Project Sentinel checks what the handoff left and what the fresh context picked up
• Cache Guardian: the prompt cache in view, why each rebuild happened and how to avoid the next, model switches confirmed before they throw a large cache away, and Keep warm, which holds the cache while you are away
• run progress that survives those handoffs, with evidence for each verified milestone (it says when a later change made a verification stale), and an Activity view that leads with what needs a look, with its own views: Summary, Operations, Agents and Tool calls
• Operations, the run over time: work you queue for Claude for later, decisions Claude leaves for you instead of stopping, watchers that park the run until a result is due and then wake it, a Cold Resume Guard that asks before a large conversation whose cache has lapsed is re-read, the agents actually running, and an optional run budget
• answer styles: brief, Simplified Technical English, mission-control status calls, or a quest log with XP for verified progress
• policies for effort, finishing the job, models, subagents, machine load and risky actions, with profiles that set everything at once. A fresh install starts opinionated (Autopilot at 70%, Frontier Max at Extra High) and says so once; an existing install keeps exactly what it had
• Kit, if you like: a small Claude-orange creature above the status bar that shows what Claude is doing, and answers a click

Status: 1.7.0. Project Sentinel is built on Claude Code's function-hooks plugin API ("mods"), which is still early access and may change between Claude Code releases. It is verified on Claude Code 2.1.289 (the minimum), 2.1.293, 2.1.295 and 2.1.296 (the CLI) on Windows 11. See Compatibility.

Contents

• Screenshots
• Features
• Requirements
• Install
• Using Project Sentinel
• Profiles
• How the systems interact
• Security and privacy
• Compatibility
• Limitations
• Development
• License

Further reading: Configuration · Troubleshooting · Design · Architecture · Security · Changelog · Contributing

Screenshots

In the terminal

Control Room 1.3.0 in a 150-column Windows console (Claude Code 2.1.293), with the panel docked beside the conversation (the Answer style and Quest cards are from 1.1.0; they did not change). The work is a scripted turn played by the development-only demo driver: Claude Code ran every tool call in it for real (a test that fails and is fixed, new code with its test, a lint script that does not exist), but no model wrote the words, and the token counts are scripted, a model switch halfway through included. Claude Code reports no cost for them, so the cost reads $0.00 (with a + after a cleared session whose cost was not reported).

In Claude Desktop