What is SpecStory?

SpecStory is a suite of local-first extensions that automatically captures your AI coding sessions as reusable git-friendly markdown. While Git tracks what changed in your code, SpecStory helps capture why it changed, preserving the reasoning and decision-making that drove the intent behind every line. Never lose AI chat history.

❗️Important Note

By default, installing from the Visual Studio Marketplace directly will install SpecStory into VS Code. To instead install SpecStory into Cursor, you must install directly from inside the extensions panel in Cursor (see details on our documentation site).

✨ What the SpecStory extension does

📝 Automatic local capture

SpecStory automatically saves your AI conversations to .specstory/history/ in your project directory. So your prompts stay with your code.

Toggle auto-save on/off in settings to match your workflow.

🤖 Generate AI rules from your conversations

Transform your chat history into Cursor Rules or Copilot Instructions. SpecStory uses your interaction data to create and maintain context files that keep your AI on track.

Customize the structure and SpecStory adapts to your preferences.

💾 Selective saving

Use Command Palette (CMD/Ctrl-Shift-P) → SpecStory: Save AI Chat History to manually save specific conversations when auto-save is off.

🔗 Share conversations

Share your problem-solving process with teammates. Command Palette → SpecStory: Share AI Chat History creates anonymous shareable links to your conversations.

🎮 Control panel

Access the SpecStory panel to manage histories, configure settings, and monitor auto-save status. Find it in the sidebar or via View: Open View > SpecStory in the command palette.

🛠️ For Developers

Enable specstory.showDeveloperTools in VS Code settings to access:

1. Debug logging in the SpecStory output channel
2. Cursor sqlite DB explorer in your Primary Sidebar with:

• Search: Command Palette → SpecStory (Developer Tools): Search VS Code State or click the magnifying glass icon
• Refresh: Command Palette → SpecStory (Developer Tools): Refresh VS Code State or use the refresh button
• Copy values: Hover over any value and click the copy icon

☁️ SpecStory Cloud

SpecStory Cloud is a new progressive enhancement of our local first extension suite that unifies all your AI conversations from Cursor, VS Code, Claude Code, and BearClaude into one searchable place.

🚀 Quick Start

For VS Code/Cursor users:

1. Sign up at cloud.specstory.com
2. Open Command Palette → SpecStory: Open Cloud Sync Configuration

You'll see this screen and then follow the authentication prompts to sync your first project:

For Claude Code users:

1. Sign up at cloud.specstory.com
2. Authenticate: specstory auth login
3. Sync your conversations: specstory sync

✨ Why Cloud?

• Search everywhere: Full-text search across all your AI chats
• Privacy first: Nothing syncs without your explicit permission
• All tools in one place: Unify conversations from Cursor, VS Code, Claude Code, and more

Full documentation →

✨ We're always shipping something new

• Interested in a minimalist approach for turning markdown specs into software?
• Try our latest product for macOS at bearclaude.com

📚 Documentation & Community

• Find our docs chock full of use cases and a getting started guide to master your craft @ docs.specstory.com.
• Join our slack community to connect with other software composers!

🔮 Issue Reporting and Feature Requests

• Found a bug? Have a feature request? Please log it on our issues page on GitHub.
• For any other issue please email us at support@specstory.com.

🔒 Privacy

SpecStory collects usage data to help improve the product. This can be disabled in the extension by unchecking SpecStory: Help Us Improve in your SpecStory extension settings.

This setting does not affect web analytics. For more information about what data we collect and how we use it, please see our privacy policy and data privacy docs which provide detail by feature.