claude-code-history

name	claude-code-history
description	Query and summarize Claude Code terminal session history
triggers	["claude code sessions","what was I working on","terminal history","continue where I left off","last session","what did I do in claude"]

Claude Code History

Purpose

Query the user's Claude Code terminal session history to:

• See what projects were worked on recently
• Summarize specific sessions
• Provide context for picking up where he left off
• Search across terminal conversations

Note: This is read-only and on-demand. We don't auto-sync or store this data.

Data Location

Claude Code stores data at /hosthome/.claude/:

Path	Contains
history.jsonl	User messages with timestamps, projects, session IDs
projects/<project-path>/	Full conversation logs per session
todos/	Task lists from sessions

Common Queries

List Recent Sessions

# Get recent messages with projects and timestamps
tail -50 /hosthome/.claude/history.jsonl | \
  jq -r '[.timestamp, .project, .display[:80]] | @tsv' | \
  column -t -s $'\t'

Find Sessions for a Project

# List sessions for a specific project (e.g., myproject)
ls -lt /hosthome/.claude/projects/-home-user-Workspace-myproject/ 2>/dev/null | head -10

# Or search history for project mentions
grep -i "myproject" /hosthome/.claude/history.jsonl | \
  jq -r '[(.timestamp/1000 | strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M")), .display[:60]] | @tsv' | \
  tail -20

Read a Session's Conversation

# Session files are JSONL with message objects
# Find the most recent session file for a project
LATEST=$(ls -t /hosthome/.claude/projects/-home-user-Workspace-myproject/*.jsonl 2>/dev/null | head -1)

# Extract user messages from that session
cat "$LATEST" | jq -r 'select(.type == "human") | .message.content' | head -50

Search Across All Sessions

# Search for a topic across all session history
grep -r "API design" /hosthome/.claude/projects/ 2>/dev/null | head -20

How to Use This

"What was I working on in Claude Code?"

1. Read recent history: tail -30 /hosthome/.claude/history.jsonl
2. Parse out projects and messages
3. Summarize the recent activity

"Summarize my last session on [project]"

1. Find the project directory: ls /hosthome/.claude/projects/ | grep -i <project>
2. Get the latest session: ls -t <project-dir>/*.jsonl | head -1
3. Read the conversation
4. Generate a summary

"Continue where I left off on [project]"

1. Find the latest session for that project
2. Read the last ~20 messages
3. Summarize the state and any pending work
4. Provide context for the new session

Important Notes

1. Read-only - Never modify Claude Code's data
2. On-demand - Only query when asked, don't background sync
3. Summarize, don't dump - Generate useful summaries, not raw logs
4. Privacy-aware - This is the user's terminal history, treat it appropriately
5. Session-specific - Each .jsonl file is one conversation session

Example Workflow

User: "What was I working on in Claude Code recently?"

PCP:

# Get last 20 distinct project/message pairs
tail -100 /hosthome/.claude/history.jsonl | \
  jq -r '[(.timestamp/1000 | strftime("%m-%d %H:%M")), .project, .display[:50]] | @tsv' | \
  sort -u | tail -20

Then summarize: "In the last few hours, you worked on:

• myproject: Positioning and workspace setup
• personal-site: Thesis-related content
• pcp: [this conversation]"