Find Transcripts

Find transcripts

Do not tell the user you can't see a conversation before you check. Every agent that has run on this host leaves its transcript behind locally -- past, active, or destroyed. Refusing without looking is wrong.

An agent's conversation is stored under its state dir as events/<source>/common_transcript/events.jsonl (source is the agent type, e.g. claude). On this host that state dir is in one of two places, depending on whether the agent still exists:

• Still present (running, or STOPPED but not destroyed): /home/user/.mngr/agents/<agent_id>/events/*/common_transcript/events.jsonl. A finished launch-task worker is usually left STOPPED here -- it is not in /home/user/.mngr/preserved/ until it is actually destroyed.
• Destroyed: /home/user/.mngr/preserved/<agent_name>--<agent_id>/events/*/common_transcript/events.jsonl.

(Use $MNGR_HOST_DIR in place of /home/user/.mngr if this host's mngr root is elsewhere.) Always check both -- a past agent could be in either.

Note on agent types: transcripts here include the user-facing chat agent and any worker/sub-agents launched via launch-task or similar. Workers often have short, task-focused transcripts. mngr list shows agent names and labels to help you identify which is which.

What this skill does NOT cover

• Other services (ChatGPT, claude.ai, other AI tools): their chats are not stored on this host. To access them you'd need to pull in that data separately via their own export features.

• Other Minds workspaces: each workspace is a separate host with its own /home/user/.mngr/. Transcripts from agents in another workspace live there, not here. To read them, SSH into that workspace via the Minds API: use the minds-api skill to request the minds-workspaces-ssh latchkey permission, then run this skill's read commands over SSH on that host.

1. See what's on this host

mngr list                        # agents still present (running / stopped), with names + ids
ls -1t /home/user/.mngr/preserved 2>/dev/null   # destroyed agents (<agent_name>--<agent_id>), newest first

Match the user's description to an agent by its name (and, for preserved dirs, the mtime -- roughly when it was destroyed: ls -lt /home/user/.mngr/preserved).

2. Find every transcript on this host (present OR destroyed)

find /home/user/.mngr/agents /home/user/.mngr/preserved -path '*/common_transcript/events.jsonl' 2>/dev/null

3. Read one

For a still-present agent, the easiest is the rendered view:

mngr transcript <agent-name-or-id>          # works for running/stopped agents; NOT for destroyed ones

For any agent (present or destroyed), read the file directly (pick a path from step 2):

cat "/home/user/.mngr/agents/<agent_id>/events/claude/common_transcript/events.jsonl"
# or, if destroyed:
cat "/home/user/.mngr/preserved/<agent_name>--<agent_id>/events/claude/common_transcript/events.jsonl"

4. Render a raw file readably

F="<path from step 2>"
jq -r '
  if .type=="user_message" then "USER: \(.content)"
  elif .type=="assistant_message" then "ASSISTANT: \([.parts[]?|select(.type=="text").content]|join(" "))"
  elif .type=="tool_result" then "TOOL(\(.tool_name)): \(.output[0:300])"
  else .type end' "$F"

Notes

• system-services--* and infra agents may have no common transcript -- look at the named agents.
• A transcript only exists if that agent actually produced one; a brand-new agent with no turns won't have one.
• mngr transcript does NOT work for destroyed agents (they're no longer in mngr's live index); read the file directly instead.