session-search

Two scripts in scripts/ locate past sessions and dump their content:

• find_sessions.py , discover + filter sessions (metadata + optional full-text grep).
• show_session.py , print a single session's conversation (user/assistant turns) in readable form.

Both read directly from disk , no API calls, no auth. They resolve paths from $HOME so they work for any macOS user:

• Claude Code CLI: ~/.claude/projects/*/\*.jsonl
• Claude Cowork: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/local-agent-mode-sessions/*/*/local_*/audit.jsonl (sibling local_*.json holds title/metadata)

How to use

Start narrow, widen if needed. Prefer --grep for content recall; use metadata filters to scope.

Step 1 , find candidate sessions

scripts/find_sessions.py --grep "recruitee logo api"      # content search
scripts/find_sessions.py --title "rippling"              # title substring
scripts/find_sessions.py --cwd "Recruitee"               # Code sessions under matching cwd
scripts/find_sessions.py --since 2026-03-01 --until 2026-03-31
scripts/find_sessions.py --kind cowork -n 30             # 30 most recent Cowork

Combine freely. Output is a table by default; add --json for structured piping.

--grep PATTERN is a regex (case-insensitive). It searches message text inside every transcript and prints 1-2 matching snippets per session along with the session row. Use this when the user remembers a phrase or topic, not a title.

Step 2 , pull full context from a specific session

scripts/show_session.py <path-from-step-1>       # full conversation
scripts/show_session.py <path> --grep "logo"     # only turns mentioning "logo" (with ±1 surrounding turn)
scripts/show_session.py <path> --tail 20         # last 20 turns

The script strips tool calls/results and renders user + assistant text only. Output is markdown-ish; pipe to a pager if long.

Filter reference

find_sessions.py flags:

• --kind {code,cowork,all} , default all
• --since YYYY-MM-DD, --until YYYY-MM-DD , by last-activity mtime
• --title TEXT , substring, case-insensitive (Cowork uses the stored title; Code uses the first user message)
• --cwd TEXT , substring match against the working directory recorded in Code transcripts
• --grep PATTERN , regex across transcript body
• -n, --limit N , cap results (default 50, 0 = all)
• --snippets N , how many matching lines to show per session under --grep (default 2)
• --json , machine-readable output

Tips

• If the user's description is vague, run --grep with 2–3 alternative phrasings in parallel before narrowing.
• For Code sessions the "title" is a best-effort extraction of the first user message; for Cowork it comes from the .json sidecar written by the desktop app.
• A session can have many transcripts (resumes, forks). find_sessions.py lists each transcript separately; that's usually what you want , the most recent one is the live thread.
• Transcripts can be large (several MB). When dumping content to the user, prefer show_session.py --grep or --tail over the full file.