dropbox Pickbrain — Semantic Search for Claude History and Slack
Search past Pi sessions, Claude Code conversations, Codex sessions, Slack messages, memory files, and authored files using semantic search.
Installation
Build and install from the repo root:
make pickbrain
# then copy or symlink the binary to somewhere on your PATH:
ln -sf "$(pwd)/pickbrain" ~/bin/pickbrain
The binary embeds its own model weights (embed-assets feature), so no separate assets directory is needed.
Usage
Run pickbrain via Bash with the user's query:
pickbrain "$ARGUMENTS"
Pickbrain automatically ingests new Pi/Claude/Codex sessions, Slack conversations (from the desktop app's local IndexedDB), memories, and project config files before each search.
Interpreting Results
Each result includes:
- Timestamp and project directory (or channel name for Slack results)
- Source —
pi,claude,codex, orslack - Session ID and turn number (Claude/Codex) or channel + thread ID (Slack)
- Matching text — the relevant chunk from the conversation
Slack results show thr:TIMESTAMP for threaded conversations. This thread ID can be passed to --session or --dump to filter/view that thread.
Present results as a concise summary. Quote the most relevant excerpts. If the user wants to dig deeper into a specific session, use --dump:
pickbrain --dump <session-id> [--turns <start>-<end>]
pickbrain --dump <channel-name> [--turns <start>-<end>] [--since 7d]
pickbrain --dump thr:<thread-ts>
Slack results include (you: Name (@handle)) to identify the logged-in user.
Filtering
To search within the current (calling) session:
pickbrain --current "<query>"
To search within a specific session, channel, or thread:
pickbrain --session <session-id> "<query>"
pickbrain --channel <channel-name> "<query>"
pickbrain --session thr:<thread-ts> "<query>"
--channel is an alias for --session.
To exclude the current (calling) session from results:
pickbrain --exclude-current "<query>"
To filter by git branch:
pickbrain --branch <branch-name> "<query>"
pickbrain --branch . "<query>" # . = current branch
To exclude specific sessions from results (comma-separated or repeated):
pickbrain --exclude <uuid1>,<uuid2> "<query>"
pickbrain --exclude <uuid1> --exclude <uuid2> "<query>"
To search only recent history:
pickbrain --since 24h "<query>"
pickbrain --since 7d "<query>"
pickbrain --since 2w "<query>"
To filter by source type (pi, claude, codex, slack):
pickbrain --type slack "<query>"
pickbrain --type claude,codex "<query>"
To filter Slack results by DM or non-DM:
pickbrain --dm "<query>" # only DMs
pickbrain --no-dm "<query>" # only channels (exclude DMs)
To show only Slack conversations with unread messages:
pickbrain --unread "<query>"
To control the number of results (0 = unlimited; default: unlimited in TUI, 20 in pipe):
pickbrain -n 50 "<query>"
pickbrain -n 0 "<query>" # all results
When any filter is active (--type, --session, --channel, --dm, --no-dm, --unread, --since), the query can be omitted to browse matching results sorted by date:
pickbrain --type slack --unread
pickbrain --channel general --since 7d
pickbrain --dm --since 24h
Notes
- First run requires a full ingest+embed pass (~7s). Subsequent searches auto-ingest incrementally.
- The database lives at
~/.pickbrain/pickbrain.db. - Results are ranked by semantic similarity — they may not contain the exact query words.
- The active session's JSONL is skipped during ingest if it was indexed less than 10 minutes ago. If the active session can't be detected (e.g. on Windows), everything is ingested eagerly.