| name | session-search |
| description | Full-text search across Claude Code session transcripts — finds past sessions by message CONTENT, not just title (the built-in session pickers in the CLI and the VSCode/Cursor extension only match titles). Use whenever the user wants to locate or resume a past session/conversation by what was discussed in it, e.g. "find the session where we discussed X", "which chat did I fix Y in", "search my sessions for Z", "when did I talk about W with you", "did we already debug this somewhere", or any request to grep/search Claude Code history or transcripts. |
Session Search
Search the contents of past Claude Code sessions (all messages, not just titles) and return session IDs the user can resume.
How
Run the bundled script (stdlib-only, use system python3):
python3 ~/.claude/skills/session-search/scripts/search_sessions.py TERM [TERM ...]
- Multiple terms are ANDed: a session must contain all of them (case-insensitive substring), anywhere in its user/assistant message text.
- Defaults to the current project's sessions. Results are sorted newest-first.
Useful flags:
| Flag | Effect |
|---|
--all-projects | search every project under ~/.claude/projects/ |
--project PATH | search the sessions of another project directory |
--regex 'PATTERN' | single case-insensitive regex instead of AND-terms |
--include-tools | also match tool inputs/outputs and metadata (file paths, command output) |
--thinking | also search assistant thinking blocks |
--limit N | show more than the default 10 sessions |
Interpreting output
Each hit prints the session ID, last-modified time, number of matching messages, the session's first user message (as a title), up to 3 snippets with the match marked «like this», and a ready-to-run resume command.
Answering the user
- Report the most likely session(s) with their title, date, and a snippet — don't just dump raw output if it's long.
- Tell them how to open it:
- Terminal:
claude --resume <session-id> (run from the matching project directory).
- VSCode/Cursor extension: the picker can't jump to an ID, so point them to the session by its title and date shown in the output.
- If terms are too common (many sessions match), suggest adding a second distinguishing term rather than eyeballing dozens of hits. If nothing matches, retry with fewer/shorter terms or
--include-tools (the phrase may have appeared in command output rather than message text).
