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Track drift

Saved a profile a while ago and wonder what you've changed since? Give cprof diff a single profile and it re-scans your current machine and shows the difference — the drift between the saved profile and your live setup.

Check drift​

cprof diff claude-profile.json

cprof re-scans the current machine using the profile's own scope and metadata (the same way refresh does, so there's no name/version noise), then diffs the saved profile against that live snapshot:

  • + — something on the machine that isn't in the profile (added since you saved)
  • - — something in the profile that's no longer on the machine (removed since you saved)
  • ~ — a value that changed

A clean machine prints No differences. Drift is not an error — cprof diff exits 0 either way (with --json, the equal field tells them apart).

Drift vs. "what would install do"​

cprof diff <profile> answers "how has my machine changed vs the profile?". For the inverse — "what would applying this profile change?" — use cprof install --dry-run, which prints the write plan without touching anything.

Comparing two files​

The two-argument form is unchanged — compare any two profile files:

cprof diff a.json b.json

Secret-looking changed values are redacted in the output, and key order is ignored. See the diff reference for both forms.