claude-pager

On <2026-06-03 Wed> I somehow bumped into idea to use emacsclient as EDITOR in Claude Code.

Turns out CC respects EDITOR env variable, either from environment or configured in ~/.claude/settings.json:

{"env": {"EDITOR": "emacsclient", "VISUAL": "emacsclient"}}

Even if [Feature Request] Allow configuring external editor for Ctrl-G prompt editing · Issue #18990 · anthropics/claude-code is still in open.

In that issue I spotted this project: gradigit/claude-pager. Fast C transcript pager for Claude Code: no blank Ctrl-G screen, clickable links/files, queued prompt composer. And its sister editor: gradigit/turbodraft.

Tried both. Turbodraft - I don't need another text editor rather than Emacs, so skipping it. But claude-pager looks useful, so I forked it.

First, I wired Emacs into claude-pager; so that it renders transcripts in both CC screen when it waits for the prompt + adds it to Emacs temporary buffer.

This mostly solves clunkiness of copying from claude terminal into Emacs and back - now I press {C-g} in claude and continue editing in Emacs.

Related to Agent SDK billing and parting ways with agent-shell.

This is how my env block looks like in ~/.claude/settings.json.

{
  "env": {
    "EDITOR": "/Users/pavel/.velppa/claude-pager/bin/claude-pager-open",
    "CLAUDE_PAGER_EDITOR": "/Users/pavel/.velppa/claude-pager/emacs/claude-emacs-prompt",
    "CLAUDE_PAGER_EDITOR_TYPE": "gui"
  }
}

{C-g} in claude opens claude-pager-open that generates transcript and pastes it into both terminal and to the temp file to edit in Emacs, then runs claude-emacs-prompt shell file that calls elisp file which loads into the buffer, assigns keybindings etc.

Setup involves adding hooks:

SessionStart hook:
     26:            "command": "/Users/pavel/.velppa/claude-pager/shim/save-session-transcript.sh"

Then I rewrote the binary from C to Zig. Rewrite used Superpowers to develop a spec first, then launch a series of agents. It took 4+ hours for CC to finish rewrite, it was ready in the morning. It used all extra usage (42 EUR) in fast mode in first 20 minutes.

7000 loc in C => ??? in Zig.