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search-history

Search Claude conversation history from JSONL files. Use when looking for previous discussions, past decisions, code solutions, or context from earlier conversations.

personAuthor: jakexiaohubgithub

Conversation History Search

Search through Claude Code conversation history to find relevant past discussions.

When to Use

  • Finding previous discussions about a topic
  • Recalling past decisions or solutions
  • Getting context from earlier conversations
  • Looking up how something was implemented before

How to Search

Run the search script from the services directory:

cd ~/.claude/services
python conversation-search.py "search term"

Search Options

| Option | Description | |--------|-------------| | --list-sessions, -l | List all sessions with metadata | | --session ID, -s | Filter to specific session (partial match) | | --context N, -c | Show N messages before/after (default: 3) | | --max N, -m | Maximum results (default: 20) | | --verbose, -v | Show context messages | | --full, -f | Show full message content |

Examples

# List all available sessions
python conversation-search.py --list-sessions

# Basic search
python conversation-search.py "bulk upload"

# Regex search
python conversation-search.py "context.*percent|usage.*%"

# Search specific session with full output
python conversation-search.py "statusline" --session 6cabef43 --full

# Get more context around matches
python conversation-search.py "error" --context 5 --verbose --max 3

Output Modes

  1. Default: Preview snippet (50 chars before, 100 after match)
  2. Verbose (-v): Adds surrounding message context
  3. Full (-f): Complete message content

Token Efficiency

The search runs externally, so searching costs 0 tokens. Only the returned results consume context.