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Reviewing Session Changes

What Changed While You Were Away?

Between sessions, teammates commit code, context files get updated, and decisions pile up. ctx change gives you a single-command summary of everything that moved since your last session.

Quick Start

# Auto-detects your last session and shows what changed
ctx change

# Check what changed in the last 48 hours
ctx change --since 48h

# Check since a specific date
ctx change --since 2026-03-10

How Reference Time Works

ctx change needs a reference point to compare against. It tries these sources in order:

  1. --since flag: explicit duration (24h, 72h) or date (2026-03-10, RFC3339 timestamp)
  2. Session markers: ctx-loaded-* files in .context/state/; picks the second-most-recent (your previous session start)
  3. Event log: last context-load-gate event from .context/state/events.jsonl
  4. Fallback: 24 hours ago

The marker-based detection means ctx change usually just works without any flags: it knows when you last loaded context and shows everything after that.

What It Reports

Context file changes

Any .md file in .context/ modified after the reference time:

### Context File Changes
- `TASKS.md` - modified 2026-03-11 14:30
- `DECISIONS.md` - modified 2026-03-11 09:15

Code changes

Git activity since the reference time:

### Code Changes
- **12 commits** since reference point
- **Latest**: Fix journal enrichment ordering
- **Directories touched**: internal, docs, specs
- **Authors**: jose, claude

Integrating Into Session Start

Pair ctx change with the /ctx-remember ceremony for a complete session-start picture:

# 1. Load context (this also creates the session marker)
ctx agent --budget 4000

# 2. See what changed since your last session
ctx change

Or script it:

# .context/hooks/session-start.sh
ctx agent --budget 4000
echo "---"
ctx change

Team Workflows

When multiple people share a .context/ directory, ctx change shows who changed what:

# After pulling from remote
git pull
ctx change --since 72h

This surfaces context file changes from teammates that you might otherwise miss in the commit log.

Tips

  • No changes? If nothing shows up, the reference time might be wrong. Use --since 48h to widen the window.
  • Works without git. Context file changes are detected by filesystem mtime, not git. Code changes require git.
  • Hook integration. The context-load-gate hook writes the session marker that ctx change uses for auto-detection. If you're not using the ctx plugin, markers won't exist and it falls back to the event log or 24h window.