Vault Import

Vault Import — Backfill Historical Sessions

Discover historical Claude Code sessions, summarize them via parallel sub-agents, and write structured session notes to the Obsidian vault. Skips sessions already present in the vault.

Tools needed: Bash, Write, Read, Skill (for /context-shield sub-agents)

Prerequisites:

• /conversation-search skill must be installed
• /context-shield skill must be installed
• Obsidian Brain must be configured (run /obsidian-setup if not)

Procedure

Follow these steps exactly. Do not skip steps or reorder them.

Step 1 — Read config

Run:

cd "$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel 2>/dev/null || pwd)"
python3 -c '
import sys, os
import glob; sys.path.insert(0, max(glob.glob(os.path.expanduser("~/.claude/plugins/cache/*/obsidian-brain/*/hooks")), default="hooks"))
from obsidian_utils import load_config
c = load_config()
if not c.get("vault_path"):
    print("ERROR: vault_path not configured", file=sys.stderr)
    sys.exit(1)
print("VAULT=" + c["vault_path"])
print("SESS=" + c.get("sessions_folder", "claude-sessions"))
print("INS=" + c.get("insights_folder", "claude-insights"))
'

Parse each output line as KEY=VALUE, splitting on the first =.

If the command exits non-zero or prints ERROR, tell the user:

Config not found. Please run /obsidian-setup first to configure your Obsidian vault.

Stop here if config is missing.

Store the extracted values as VAULT_PATH and SESSIONS_FOLDER (default claude-sessions).

Step 2 — Validate vault access

Run:

test -d "$VAULT_PATH/$SESSIONS_FOLDER" && test -w "$VAULT_PATH/$SESSIONS_FOLDER" && echo "OK" || echo "FAIL"

If FAIL, tell the user:

The sessions folder $VAULT_PATH/$SESSIONS_FOLDER does not exist or is not writable. Run /obsidian-setup to fix this.

Stop here if FAIL.

Step 3 — Parse arguments

Parse the user's invocation to extract:

• Time range: A duration like 7d, 14d, 30d. Default is 7d if not specified.
• Project filter: An optional project:<name> argument (e.g. project:api-service).

Examples:

• /vault-import — last 7 days, all projects
• /vault-import 30d — last 30 days, all projects
• /vault-import project:api-service 14d — last 14 days, only api-service
• /vault-import project:api-service — last 7 days, only api-service

Store as TIME_RANGE and PROJECT_FILTER (empty string if no filter).

Step 4 — Discover sessions

Use the /conversation-search skill's underlying search script to find sessions matching the time range and project filter.

Run:

bash ~/.claude/skills/conversation-search/scripts/search-conversations.sh --days <TIME_RANGE_NUMBER> --format jsonl

If a project filter is specified, add --project <PROJECT_FILTER> to the command.

If the script is not found, fall back to manually scanning ~/.claude/projects/ for session JSONL files modified within the time range:

find ~/.claude/projects/ -name "*.jsonl" -mtime -<TIME_RANGE_NUMBER> -type f 2>/dev/null

Parse the output to build a list of sessions. Each session needs:

• session_id — extracted from the filename or JSONL content
• session_path — absolute path to the JSONL file
• project — extracted from the directory path or JSONL content
• date — file modification date

If no sessions are found, tell the user:

No sessions found in the last <TIME_RANGE> matching your filters.

Stop here if no sessions found.

Step 5 — Filter already-imported sessions

Check the vault for existing session notes that match discovered session IDs.

Run:

grep -rl "session_id:" "$VAULT_PATH/$SESSIONS_FOLDER/" 2>/dev/null | xargs grep -l "<SESSION_ID>" 2>/dev/null

More efficiently, build a single grep command:

for f in "$VAULT_PATH/$SESSIONS_FOLDER/"*.md; do
  head -20 "$f" 2>/dev/null
done | grep "session_id:" | awk '{print $2}'

Collect all session IDs already in the vault into a set called EXISTING_IDS. Remove any session from the discovered list whose session_id is in EXISTING_IDS.

Store the remaining sessions as PENDING_SESSIONS and the count of skipped sessions as SKIPPED_COUNT.

If no pending sessions remain, tell the user:

All <TOTAL> sessions from the last <TIME_RANGE> are already in the vault. Nothing to import.

Stop here if nothing to import.

Otherwise, report:

Found <TOTAL> sessions, <SKIPPED_COUNT> already imported, <PENDING_COUNT> to import.

Step 6 — Summarize sessions with parallel sub-agents

This is the performance-critical step. Use parallel sub-agents to maximize throughput.

For each session in PENDING_SESSIONS, delegate to a /context-shield sub-agent with this prompt:

Read the Claude Code session transcript at <SESSION_PATH>. Extract and return a structured summary with these exact sections:

• Summary: 2-3 sentence overview of what was accomplished
• Key Decisions: Bulleted list of architectural or design choices made
• Changes Made: Bulleted list of files created, modified, or deleted
• Errors Encountered: Bulleted list of errors hit and how they were resolved (or "None")
• Next Steps: Bulleted list of follow-up tasks mentioned (or "None")
• Git Info: Branch name, commit hashes if any (or "None")

Keep the total output under 300 tokens. Return only the structured summary, no preamble.

Parallelism rules:

• Launch up to 5 sub-agents in parallel (sessions are independent — no shared state)
• Wait for the batch to complete before launching the next batch
• If a sub-agent fails or times out, log the error and skip that session — do not block the entire import

Collect the distilled summaries. Store each as SUMMARY keyed by session_id.

Step 7 — Construct and write session notes

For each successfully summarized session, construct a vault note with this format:

---
type: claude-session
date: <YYYY-MM-DD from session date>
session_id: <session_id>
project: <project name>
git_branch: <branch from git info, or empty>
duration_minutes: <estimated from transcript length, or empty>
imported: true
imported_date: <today's date YYYY-MM-DD>
tags:
  - claude/session
  - claude/project/<project-name>
  - claude/imported
---

# <Session Title derived from summary>

<Summary section>

## Key Decisions

<Key decisions bulleted list>

## Changes Made

<Changes bulleted list>

## Errors Encountered

<Errors bulleted list>

## Next Steps

<Next steps bulleted list>

## Git Info

<Git info>

Generate the filename using the same convention as other session notes:

1. Date: YYYY-MM-DD (session date)
2. Slug: Title lowercased, spaces to hyphens, non-alphanumeric (except hyphens) removed, truncated to 50 chars
3. Hash: 4-character hex hash from the session_id: echo -n "<session_id>" | md5 | cut -c1-4 (macOS) or echo -n "<session_id>" | md5sum | cut -c1-4 (Linux). Do NOT use tail -c 4 — it counts the trailing newline as a byte and returns only 3 visible characters.

Final filename: YYYY-MM-DD-<slug>-<hash>.md

Write each note:

mkdir -p "$VAULT_PATH/$SESSIONS_FOLDER"

Use the Write tool to write the file, then:

chmod 644 "$VAULT_PATH/$SESSIONS_FOLDER/<filename>"

Step 8 — Report results

Print a summary report:

Vault import complete!

• Imported: <IMPORTED_COUNT> sessions
• Skipped (already in vault): <SKIPPED_COUNT> sessions
• Failed: <FAILED_COUNT> sessions (if any)
• Time range: last <TIME_RANGE>
• Project filter: <PROJECT_FILTER> (or "all projects")

New notes written to: $VAULT_PATH/$SESSIONS_FOLDER/

If any sessions failed, list them:

Failed sessions:

• <session_id>: <error reason>

Offer follow-up:

Run /vault-import <longer range> to go further back, or open Obsidian to browse the imported sessions.