Saropa Chat Explorer: Search and Resume AI Agent Chat History in VS Code

Saropa Chat Explorer lets you search your agent chat history from the VS Code sidebar and resume the session you find.

What it does

Full-text search of agent sessions: find an old chat by any word or phrase in it.
Searches subagent transcripts too. A chat's row shows its newest match, even when a subagent wrote it.
Click a result to resume that session. Resuming needs the agent extension.
Shows which chat edited this file, from the Explorer, editor or tab menu.
Shows the git state of a chat in its expanded card, one collapsed section at a time: branch and open pull request, files not committed, unpushed commits and worktrees.
Runs in the background and reads local files. The extension itself makes no network requests. The optional pull request lookup runs the local gh command, which contacts GitHub with your own sign-in (setting saropaChatExplorer.lookupPullRequests, on by default).

Features

Feature	What you get
Full-text search	Searches the chats of the open workspace from one activity-bar panel. Tick All projects to search every project.
Exact phrase by default	The whole query is one exact phrase. "my family" must appear together in one message.
Match options	Match any order (Alt+O), Match Case (Alt+C), Whole Word (Alt+W), regular expression (Alt+R).
Quoted phrases	With Match any order on, `"quoted phrases"` stay exact.
Messages from	The "messages from" dropdown (Both, You, Agent) or `from:you` / `from:agent` limits the search to your messages or to the agent's (subagent messages count as the agent). It changes hits, snippets and Open in editor, and the summary line says "from you only" or "from agent only" when it is not Both.
Search tips	The info icon beside the sort and filter icons lists the prefixes with an example each; clicking one fills the search box.
Last N messages	`last:<n>` or the "messages to search" dropdown (last 10, 25, 50, 100) searches only the final N messages of each chat.
When filter	"chats active during": any time, last hour, 2, 4 or 8 hours, today, this week or this month. Local time: today starts at midnight, this week at 00:00 on Monday, this month at 00:00 on the 1st.
Search details	The `...` button under the search box (tooltip "Toggle search details") shows or hides the details, each as a label on the left and its control on the right: chats active during, messages to search, messages from, and search scope (the All projects and Subagents checkboxes). They start hidden, the choice is remembered per workspace, and a count on the button shows how many of them differ from the defaults; its tooltip lists them. Sort and status are not here: they are the two icon buttons beside the search box.
Open in editor	The summary line under the search box ("2,040 results in 265 chats - Open in editor") opens all matches in a read-only "Search: query" editor tab: a header per chat (Cmd/Ctrl+click resumes it), matching lines with one line of context and real JSONL line numbers, highlighted matches. Also in the Command Palette as "Saropa Chat Explorer: Open Results in Editor".
Result limit	Like VS Code Search, the panel lists at most 500 chats (setting `saropaChatExplorer.maxResults`, 50 to 2000) and says so: "Showing the top 500 of 1,284 chats (21,904 matches)" with a warning to narrow the search. Every match is still counted. A chat shows "9,999+" above 9,999 hits, and totals stop at "1,000,000+". All sessions and Archived show the same notice.
Sort	The sort icon beside the search box opens a small menu: Score, Time (grouped by day), Title, Length, Cost or Context (fullest first; chats with no usage data last). Pinned chats list first. It applies to search results and to All sessions. A dot on the icon shows a sort other than Score. Escape or a click outside closes the menu.
Status filter	The funnel icon beside the search box opens a checkable list: Mid-size, Active, Empty, Tiny, Huge, Nearly full (context 80 percent or more), Abandoned and Pinned, each with a count and a tooltip that gives its exact rule. Reset turns them all back on. It applies to search results and to All sessions. A dot on the icon shows that a status is turned off. Mid-size means a chat with none of the other statuses: 4 to 299 messages, 10 MB or less, active in the last 30 days, context under 80 percent, not pinned, and not running, waiting or unread. Active means running, waiting for you or unread, as the agent defines it.
Subagent search	The Subagents checkbox (under "search scope") is on by default. Subagent matches count toward the chat. When the newest match is a subagent's, the row shows a purple pill with its agent type.
Ranking	Title matches rank first. Recent matches score higher.
Instant results	A background index keeps results fast. Results show while indexing is still running.
Search history	Up and Down in the search box step through your last 20 searches with their toggles.
Expand in place	The chevron opens the row as a card that shows the whole title wrapped, with an action bar (Resume, Pin, Archive, Mark read, Copy ID), matched files and commands, labeled stats, tags, Git and related chats.
Result rows	One row per chat. It shows only the newest match (across the chat and its subagents) as a snippet of at most two lines. With a search, the time pill, the day groups and the Time sort use the time of that match; the chat's last active time moves to the pill tooltip and a Last active stat in the card.
More matches	A quiet +N more under the snippet opens the other matches in place, newest first, 20 at a time with Show more. They load only when you open the list. Identical texts collapse into one item with a count such as x3. Click an item to resume the chat. Right Arrow opens the list, Left Arrow or Escape closes it.
Tooltips	One themed tooltip replaces the browser tooltips in the results and the card. It wraps, stays inside the panel, shows the full chat title as its bold first line and label/value rows, and caps text at 600 characters. It opens after a short hover or on keyboard focus, and Escape, scrolling or moving away closes it.
Decorated chats	Only chats open in the agent panel, unread or pinned get the dot, status chip, context pill, Git icon and open-window marker. All other chats are plain rows (title and the time of the last message) until you search; hover the title or open the card for their message count and more. With a search every result keeps its hits and newest-match time pills. Search scans open and unread chats first, then newest first.
Row pills	For decorated chats, and for every search result, each row shows two small pills under its title: the message count and the time since it was last active (now, 3 mins, 6 hrs, 2 days, 3 wks, 4 mos, 2 yrs). A search adds a hits pill, which counts occurrences, and the time pill then shows the newest match. Hover a pill for the full wording. A Huge, Empty, Tiny or Abandoned chip sits after the pills, and a pinned chat shows a small star before them.
Highlights	Snippets start just before the first match, so the match is always visible.
Pin and tag	Star a chat to pin it. The pin, archive and tag icons appear over the end of the title when you hover the row or tab into it, so they take no room at rest. Click the tag icon on a row (it also shows when the card is open), type a name and press Enter. Escape cancels. A chat with no tags shows no tag row. Click a tag to filter.
Search tokens	`file:`, `edited:`, `cmd:`, `tag:`, `sha:`, `pr:` and `branch:`. See Search syntax.
Card sections	The expanded row has five sections, all collapsed when the card opens: Git, Uncommitted files, Unpushed commits, Worktrees and Related chats. Nothing for a section is fetched until you open it; each then shows a quiet "Loading..." and, when it arrives, a count pill. Git shows the branch with commits ahead and behind, the working folder path, the open pull request for the branch (number, title, state; click opens it in your browser) and the PRs and commits the chat mentions (click to search for one). Uncommitted files lists the changed files (click opens the file). Unpushed commits lists the commits not pushed (short id and subject, up to 20). Worktrees lists the worktrees of the chat's repository (the one this chat used is marked). Related chats lists up to 5 other chats that touched the same files. One request per section and working folder runs at a time. A folder that is missing or not a git folder says so in one line. A section that fails shows a Retry link. Every label has a tooltip.
Cost info	Dollars, lines added and removed, and models used, such as `$1.23 · +120/-30 lines · opus, sonnet`.
Status dot and pill	A dot shows the agent's own chat state (see Status dot). A chip on the pill line shows Huge, Empty, Tiny or Abandoned. The dot already says Active, so there is no Active chip.
Context pill	A pill on the pill line shows how full a chat's context window is, only from 60 percent: amber at 60 to 79, orange at 80 to 89, red at 90 and above ("82% full"). Hover it for tokens used of the window, the model, the compaction count and notes. The open card always shows a Context stat, such as "82% (164k of 200k, opus-4-6)". Chats with no usage data show nothing. The figure approximates the agent's own and lags one turn: it comes from the last reply, so a reply still being written is not counted.
Context warnings	A live chat (running, waiting or idle with a live agent process) that reaches 80 or 90 percent gets one notification with Open chat and Dismiss buttons. Each chat warns once per level, again after a compaction or after the chat falls 10 points below the level. At most one notification per 30 second check and 3 in 10 minutes. Old idle chats never warn, and an approximate figure (window size inferred from an unknown model) warns only from 90 percent. Turn it off with the setting `saropaChatExplorer.contextWarnings`. Show Diagnostics lists how many live chats are at 80 percent or more.
Open window marker	The dot's ring shows whether a live chat is open in this VS Code window (solid ring) or in another window (dashed ring). See Status dot.
Archive	Archive chats to move them into a collapsed Archived section. Import the agent's archived list once. See Archived chats.
Copy ID	The Copy ID button in the expanded row copies the chat's session id.
Day groups	Time-sorted results are grouped by day.
Open chats first	In All sessions (no search), chats that are open (they have a dot) list above chats that are not open, with a thin divider between the two blocks, even when the others were active more recently. Each block keeps the chosen sort; under Time sort the open block has no day groups, only the other block does. Pinned chats stay in their own Pinned section.
Search history	With the cursor in the search box, Up shows the previous search, Down the next one. Down past the newest restores what you typed, and Escape does too. Down in an empty box shows the newest earlier search; in a box with text it moves to the first chat in the list. In the list, Up and Down move between rows.
Chats that touched this file	The Explorer, editor and tab menus and the status bar count open the panel and search `file:<path>`. Each row shows an edited or read pill.
Copy hand-over note	The expanded row's Copy hand-over note button copies the chat title, session id, folder, branch, last active time, context percent, the matched files, and the live Git state of the chat: branch with ahead and behind counts, open pull request, uncommitted files, unpushed commits, worktrees and related chats. A part that cannot be read in 5 seconds is written as "not available" and never delays the copy.
Open Work page	"Saropa Chat Explorer: Open Work" (Command Palette, or the checklist icon in the sidebar title bar) opens an editor tab with one row per chat from the last 14 days (setting `saropaChatExplorer.openWorkDays`, 1 to 90) plus open chats, minus archived ones. Git state streams in folder by folder without ever blocking the page: each row shows branch, changed files and unpushed commits, with a "reading git" spinner until its folder is read, a "Checking git: 12 of 40 folders" counter in the header, and "timed out - Retry" if a folder is slow. Rows sit in bands: Needs you, To finish (changed files or unpushed commits), Waiting on others, Ready to tidy (clean and pushed; branch merged or its remote branch deleted; finished worktrees) and Idle. Leftover worktrees that no chat uses get their own rows; a finished one is marked "Ready to remove" with a "Copy remove command" button that only copies `git worktree remove` (and `git branch -d` when merged) for you to run yourself. The extension never writes to a repository. Pull requests stream in after git: each row on a branch with an open pull request shows its number and review state, and a check badge ("checks passing", "checks pending" or "checks failing (2 of 9)", with icon and words), a "PR #81" button that opens the page and a "Copy PR link" button; a failing check moves the chat to To finish, even while the agent runs, and rows do not jump while results stream in. Lookups use one list call per repository plus one `gh pr view` per matched branch, at most 2 gh commands at once; a failed lookup shows "PR info unavailable - Retry" on that row only, and with the setting off no gh command runs and the page shows no PR columns. Mark done hides a row until its git or chat state changes. A row expands to show its branch, changed files (click to open), unpushed commits and worktrees. "This workspace only" keeps chats from other worktrees of the same repositories. Group by attention, chat or repository; each row has Open chat, Copy hand-over note, Find and Archive. A table at 760 px and wider, stacked cards below.
Responsive layout	The panel fits any width, from a narrow sidebar to a wide editor tab.

Install

Command line:

code --install-extension claude-chat-explorer-0.14.3.vsix

Extensions panel:

Open the Extensions view.
Open the ... menu and choose "Install from VSIX...".
Pick the .vsix file.

Quick start

Click the Saropa Chat Explorer icon in the activity bar.
Wait for the first index to finish. Search works on what is indexed so far.
Type a word or phrase. Results appear after you stop typing. Enter searches at once.
Narrow the results with the toggles, the sort and status icons, and the search details (...) button (scope, time and message limits).
Click a result to resume that session, or click its chevron to read the matching messages.
Tick All projects (in the search details) to search chats from every project, not only this workspace.

Search syntax

Token	Example	Finds
plain text	`my family`	The exact phrase in one message.
`"..."`	`"regen l10n"`	An exact phrase (with Match any order on).
`last:<n>`	`deploy last:20`	Matches in the final 20 messages.
`from:you` or `from:agent`	`deploy from:you`	Only your messages, or only the agent's (and subagents'). `from:both` is the default. Does not change file, tag or git filters.
`file:<text>`	`file:search.ts`	Chats that touched a file path.
`edited:<text>`	`edited:search.ts`	Chats that edited a file path.
`cmd:<text>`	`cmd:"npm run"`	Chats where the agent ran a matching command.
`tag:<name>`	`tag:billing`	Chats you tagged.
`sha:<prefix>`	`sha:a1b2c3d`	Chats with a commit that starts with it (4 to 40 hex characters).
`pr:<number>`	`pr:#123`	Chats linked to that PR. `pr:123` works too.
`branch:<text>`	`branch:main`	Chats with a branch name containing the text.

Tokens combine with plain words and with each other.
Tokens ignore case. A search needs at least 2 characters.
Quote values that contain spaces.

Status dot

An 8 px dot sits left of each chat title. It uses the same states and colors as the agent's own panel.

Dot	Meaning
Green	Running: the agent is working in that chat.
Blue	Waiting for you: the agent needs a permission or an answer.
Orange	Unread: the chat finished while you were away. This is approximate.
Grey, faded	Idle.
Hollow ring	The chat has a live agent process (a terminal, tab or window) but is not running or waiting. The ring takes the color of its state.

Running and waiting chats keep a solid dot.
Open window marker: a live chat open in this window has a solid ring; one open in another window has a dashed ring. Running and waiting chats keep their solid dot and get the ring as a thin outer ring. The tooltip says "Open in this window" or "Open in another window".
The marker compares each live agent process's parent process id with this window's extension host. One ps call per poll reads the parent ids. On Windows, or if ps fails, no marker shows and the ring stays as before. A chat started in a terminal counts as another window.
Show Diagnostics lists this extension host's process id, the live session count, how many are in this window and in other windows, and the parent ids found.
Live state comes from the agent's session files, checked every 30 seconds and when the panel becomes visible. Without those files every chat shows idle.
Unread is our guess: a chat you saw running or waiting that then went idle or closed. Resuming the chat from the panel clears it. So does "Mark as Read" in the row's right-click menu.
Hover a dot for its name.
The Active status (the filter; the dot shows it on the row) means running, waiting for you or unread.

Archived chats

The archive icon on a row (or "Archive Chat" in its right-click menu) moves the chat out of results, All sessions and Pinned. A pinned chat stays pinned.
The Archived section sits at the bottom of the results. It starts collapsed with a count. Its rows are built only when you expand it. With a query, the count is the number of archived matches.
The archive icon on an archived row (or "Unarchive Chat") moves it back.
The archive list is shared by all your workspaces. The expanded state is remembered per workspace.
To bring in the chats you archived in the agent, run "Saropa Chat Explorer: Import Archived Chats from the Agent" from the Command Palette, or press Import in the Archived header. It runs only when you ask, reads the list once and shows how many chats it added.
Import needs the sqlite3 command-line tool on your PATH. If it is missing, or the agent has stored no list, you get a message and nothing changes.

Keyboard shortcuts

These work with the cursor in the search box.

Key	Action
Alt+C	Toggle Match Case
Alt+W	Toggle Match Whole Word
Alt+R	Toggle regular expression
Alt+O	Toggle Match any order (off while regular expression is on)
Up / Down	Previous or next search in history
Down (when not browsing history)	Move to the first result
Enter	Search now
Escape	Restore what you typed before browsing history

Open Work page

One page that answers: what is still open, and what do I do to close it? Open it from the Command Palette ("Saropa Chat Explorer: Open Work") or the checklist icon in the sidebar title bar.

What it shows

One row per chat from the last 14 days, plus open chats, minus archived ones. Change the number of days with the setting saropaChatExplorer.openWorkDays (1 to 90, default 14).
Worktrees that no chat uses get their own rows.
Each row shows the chat state, branch, changed files, unpushed commits, and the open pull request with its check result.
The header says how fresh it is ("Updated 2 min ago - Refresh"), with a progress line while git and pull requests are being read.

Bands (the header chips show the counts and turn a band on or off)

Needs you: the agent is waiting for you, or finished while you were away.
To finish: changed files, unpushed commits, a failing check, changes requested, or an approved pull request whose checks passed (or has none). An approved pull request whose checks are unknown or still running stays in Waiting on others.
Waiting on others: the agent is running, or a pull request is in review or its checks are pending.
Ready to tidy: clean and pushed, and the branch is merged or its remote branch is gone; finished worktrees.
Idle: nothing open. Hidden with the "Show idle" chip.
Group the page by attention (bands), by chat or by repository. Sort rows inside a group by recent activity (default), name or repository.

Find things

The filter box matches the title, project, branch, repository, changed file names and pull request number or title. Every word you type must match. It waits a moment after you stop typing.
State filters: Has open PR, Failing checks, Uncommitted, Unpushed. Filters combine (a row must meet all of them). "This workspace only" and "Show done" are chips too.
The filter text, state filters and sort are remembered per workspace.
If nothing matches, the page says so and offers "Clear filters". If nothing is open, it says "All clear". If none of your chats is in a git repository, it says that instead.

Actions

Open chat, Copy hand-over note, Find in the sidebar search, Archive (with Undo), Mark done (hides the row until its git or chat state changes), open a pull request or copy its link.
Copy remove command: for a finished worktree, copies git worktree remove (and git branch -d when merged) for you to run yourself.
Branches without a worktree: a collapsed section lists, per repository, local branches that have no chat and no worktree and are merged or whose remote branch is gone. A repository is read only when you open it. "Copy delete command" copies git branch -d <branch> (never for the default branch).
Copy summary: copies a short markdown summary of everything open (bands with counts, each item with its state, changed and unpushed counts, pull request number and check state) and shows "Copied N items". It holds no links.

Keyboard

j or Down: next row. k or Up: previous row. Home and End: first and last row.
Enter: open the chat. Space or Right: expand. Left: collapse.
/: go to the filter box. Esc: clear the box, or close or collapse. ?: show this list.

Safety

The extension never changes your repositories. It only runs read-only git commands (and read-only gh pr lookups when "Look Up Pull Requests" is on). Every command it offers is copied to your clipboard for you to read and run yourself; nothing is run for you, and none uses --force or -D.
Paths and branch names in copied commands are quoted for your shell. If Windows cannot quote a name safely, the page tells you to do it by hand.

Privacy

Reads Claude Code transcripts from ~/.claude/projects on your machine.
Reads the agent's live session files in ~/.claude/sessions (process id, session id and status) to color the dots. It never writes there.
When you open a section of a chat card (not when you open the card), it runs these local read-only commands with no shell, 5 second limit each, in that chat's working folder: git rev-parse --show-toplevel --git-common-dir --abbrev-ref HEAD (every section), then git for-each-ref --format=<fields> refs/heads/<branch> (Git), git status --porcelain=v1 --branch -z (Uncommitted files), git rev-list --max-count=20 --format=<fields> @{u}..HEAD (Unpushed commits) or git worktree list --porcelain -z and git for-each-ref --format=<fields> refs/heads (Worktrees). It never runs fetch, pull, checkout, reset, clean, stash, commit, push or anything that writes. Git is told not to take optional locks and never to prompt.
While saropaChatExplorer.lookupPullRequests is on (the default), the Git section, when opened, runs gh pr list --state open --limit 100 --json number,title,headRefName,isDraft,reviewDecision,url,headRefOid,isCrossRepository,headRepositoryOwner once per repository (plus git remote get-url origin when the list holds a fork pull request, to tell your own fork pull requests from others) (no shell, 8 second limit, answers kept 5 minutes, shared with the Open Work page, which also runs gh pr view <number> --json statusCheckRollup,headRefOid for pull requests on branches of its rows, answers kept 2 minutes). The gh command contacts GitHub using your own existing gh sign-in. The extension adds no network code of its own. Clicking a pull request opens the address gh returned (https only) in your browser. Turn the setting off and gh is never started. If gh is missing, signed out or offline, the section shows one muted line "Pull requests unavailable".
The search cache now also stores each chat's working folder path (the last cwd recorded in the chat file).
Runs the local ps -A -o pid=,ppid= command (no shell, 3 second limit, once per 30 second poll) to read each agent process's parent process id for the open window marker. The output is parsed in memory and not stored. No network is used.
Reads which chats are open as tabs from VS Code's workspace storage (state.vscdb), with the local sqlite3 tool, read-only, on a temporary copy that is deleted afterwards. Only session ids are kept.
Import Archived Chats reads the agent's archived-chat list from its VS Code storage, only when you press Import. It works read-only on a temporary copy, using the local sqlite3 tool, and deletes the copy afterwards.
Writes a search cache to the extension's global storage folder in VS Code. Message text is stored there in record files, up to 20,000 characters per message (8,000 for subagents). File paths and the first 300 characters of each command are stored too. Tool results are skipped.
Pins, tags, archived chats, unread marks, history and options are saved by VS Code in its own storage.
The source contains no network, HTTP or telemetry calls of its own. The only programs it starts are ps (the open window marker), sqlite3 (during Import), git (Git section, read-only) and gh (open PR lookup, on by default; contacts GitHub through your own gh sign-in).
Resuming a chat hands the session id to the agent extension through a VS Code command, or a VS Code link if the command fails.
Errors go to the "Saropa Chat Explorer" output channel.

Performance

Indexing and search run in a worker thread, so the editor does not freeze.
Index data is cached on disk and refreshed incrementally, so later starts are faster than the first.
Recently read chat records are cached in memory, up to 64 MB. Results are capped at 500 rows by default (see Result limit).
A pattern that stalls for 3 seconds is stopped with "Search timed out: simplify the pattern".
node scripts/bench.js (after npm run compile) prints build, load and query timings for your machine. Timings depend on your machine and the size of your chat folder.

FAQ

How do I search my agent chat history in VS Code? Open the Saropa Chat Explorer icon in the activity bar and type a word or phrase. Results list every matching chat.

How do I resume an old agent session? Click a result or press Enter on it. The session opens in the agent panel. This needs the agent extension.

Can I search subagent conversations? Yes. Keep the Subagents checkbox on. Subagent matches nest under their parent chat with a Subagent pill.

How do I find which chat edited a file? Right-click the file in the Explorer, the editor or its tab and choose "Saropa: Related Chats". The panel opens and searches file:<path>. Each chat has an edited or read pill, and with Score sort edited chats come first. Open a chat's details and press Copy hand-over note to pass a bug to it. Or search edited:<file name>.

Where does it store its cache? In the extension's global storage folder in VS Code, in folders named records-v<number>. Old folders are removed automatically once they are 7 days untouched.

Does it work with multiple VS Code windows? Yes. Windows share one cache with one file per chat, so they do not overwrite each other.

Why does the first start take longer? The first start builds the index of all your chats. Later starts read the cache. A new version may rebuild it once.

Can I turn off the status bar count? Yes. Set saropaChatExplorer.showFileSessionsStatusBar to false.

Requirements

VS Code 1.90.0 or newer.
The agent extension, to resume chats.
git, for the Git section of a chat card. Optional gh (signed in), for open pull requests.

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome on the GitHub repository.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.

Built by Saropa. Questions? Ideas? Open an issue. Contact: dev@saropa.com.

Part of the Saropa Suite. See ABOUT_SAROPA.md.

GitHub | Issues | Saropa

Publishing

Step by step, including how to create the access tokens: see PUBLISHING.md.

Needs accounts on the VS Code Marketplace (publisher saropa) and Open VSX, plus the gh CLI logged in.
Tokens are read from the environment, never printed: VSCE_PAT (Marketplace) and OVSX_PAT (Open VSX).
Dry run (default; builds and packages, publishes nothing): python3 scripts/publish.py
Publish, tag and release: python3 scripts/publish.py --publish (skip with --skip-marketplace, --skip-openvsx, --skip-tag, --skip-release).
Checks: clean tree on main in sync with origin, package.json version equals the top CHANGELOG heading, tag not taken, manifest check, compile, store metadata, and the .vsix contents (no plans, scripts or src).

Security: see SECURITY.md.