Read Claude Code History

Read Claude Code History

Read Claude Code evidence only. Do not resume the old process, edit its project, or turn a read request into a continuation task. When the user later asks to act, hand the verified evidence to daymade-claude-code:continue-claude-code-work.

Route by the requested result

The requested output wins over the background story. If the user asks for a chronological table of their raw inputs, return that table; do not replace it with a topic analysis because their motivation mentions an incident.

Evidence surface and completeness

By default, discover every active Claude config home and every archive registered in ~/.claude/history-sources.json. De-duplicate physical copies by Session ID and content identity, and use record timestamps rather than file mtime. A result scoped to one explicit --home is a diagnostic slice, not a completeness claim.

Treat Claude's record labels as storage metadata, not authorship proof. A top-level type: user record can contain a command envelope, hook boilerplate, a whole pasted document, agent-voiced text, or a system placeholder. Human text typed while the assistant was busy can live in attachment.queued_command.prompt with origin.kind: human; do not lose those corrections by reading only user records.

Read references/session_file_format.md when interpreting schemas, authorship, sidechains, attachment records, compaction, or file-history snapshots. Read references/hybrid_history_recall.md before building or repairing the optional BM25/vector index. Read references/workflow_examples.md for exact search, triage, and recovery examples. Read references/claude_session_format.md when you need the layout rather than the message schema — where sessions live on disk, how project paths are normalized into directory names, the sessions-index.json fields, and the compact_boundary markers that tell you a transcript was summarized rather than truncated.

Commands

Resolve every script relative to this SKILL.md; do not search the machine for a same-named helper or recreate a JSONL parser inline.

Recent inventory

<skill-dir>/scripts/list_local_history.py \
  --source claude --cwd <workspace> --limit 20 --language zh

Expected output: a Claude section with explicit source diagnostics, Session ID, internal time range, project, title, and archive/subagent markers. Use --all-projects when the workspace is unknown.

Exact Session evidence

<skill-dir>/scripts/read_claude_session.py --session <SESSION_ID>

# Add this only when the caller intentionally wants to restrict lookup to one workspace.
<skill-dir>/scripts/read_claude_session.py --session <SESSION_ID> --project <workspace>

Expected output: # Claude Code Session Evidence Briefing, session identity, compaction boundary, chronological user/assistant handoff, queued human prompts, end reason, unresolved calls, subagent state, files touched, memory, and current workspace state. The exact reader always parses every physical Session record, including records before compaction; --full only removes output character clipping. It checks active and registered-archive copies, accepts only identical or strict append-only supersets, and fails visibly on divergent copies, multiple Session identities, a missing record-level Session identity, malformed JSONL, or unreadable bytes. With an exact Session ID and no --project, it searches every project across the discovered active homes and registered archives; an explicit --project remains a strict scope. A filename alone never proves Session identity.

Full-event keyword search

<skill-dir>/scripts/analyze_sessions.py search \
  --all-projects --exclude-session <CURRENT_ID> \
  --from-date <YYYY-MM-DD> --to-date <YYYY-MM-DD> \
  '<keyword-1>' '<keyword-2>'

Search user/assistant messages, thinking, tool inputs/results, compact summaries, attachments, queues, and file snapshots. Exclude the current Session because the query itself is otherwise a guaranteed self-match. Agent prompts are excluded by default; add --include-agent-prompts only when the user explicitly wants them.

Human-input export

<skill-dir>/scripts/extract_user_messages.py \
  <persistent-output-base> --days 7 --group-by session

This produces Markdown and HTML. It separates storage pollution from human prose and recovers queued prompts. Preserve timestamps, duplicates, and Session boundaries; do not add a second thematic classification unless asked.

Deleted-content recovery

Recovery writes files, so keep it separate from ordinary reading. First run the recovery report against the exact Session file, review every proposed destination, then write only after the user asked to recover content. Never restore directly over the current project tree.

Read-result contract

Every answer must state:

1. Sources read — active homes, registered archives, exact Session files.
2. Coverage — Session IDs and internal time window.
3. Result — raw chronology or matching evidence, in the requested format.
4. Gaps — unreadable files, missing parent/attachment bytes, excluded sidechains, or any scope that was not searched.

“Not found” means “not found in the stated coverage,” never “never happened.” Do not call a compact summary verbatim history; it is a continuation aid and must be checked against raw records and the current workspace for load-bearing claims.

Guardrails

• Keep ordinary read modes read-only.
• Do not run claude --resume or claude --continue.
• Do not use file mtime as conversation chronology.
• Do not run an unbounded whole-history scan when an exact Session ID, date window, project, or existing hybrid index can answer the question.
• Do not share raw history outside the local machine without explicit user approval; it can contain credentials and private business context.
• Do not report a search as complete after a timeout or malformed source.

Router and legacy compatibility

daymade-claude-code:local-conversation-history is the cross-provider router. It sends Claude reads and every Kimi CLI request here, and does not replace this Skill's identity or evidence contract. New Codex requests route to daymade-claude-code:read-codex-history.

Kimi CLI is a live surface of this Skill, not a legacy one. It has no reader of its own, so the two commands in the task table above are the only way to reach it; a Kimi question answered from Claude data alone produces a false "never happened". Home resolution order is --kimi-home > KIMI_HOME > ~/.kimi-code.

The former claude-code-history-files-finder also exposed optional Codex and Kimi branches. Its original instructions are retained in references/legacy_cross_provider_workflow.md as a frozen snapshot for migration and regression evidence only — read it for what the old contract said, never as a description of what ships today.