Session Trace

Your Copilot Chat history, made searchable and queryable.

A VS Code extension that indexes your Copilot Chat session files (.jsonl) into a local SQLite database and exposes them through a tree view, a quick-pick search, and a language model tool for conversational queries.

Generate a changelog based on your last conversations

✨ Try It Out

Ask questions about your own chat history right in Copilot Chat using #searchChatSessions:

	Prompt
📋	Generate a changelog based on all recent chat conversations in this workspace
⏰	At which times am I most productive, doing the most frequent code changes?
📂	How do I usually start my chat sessions that end up editing many files?
🐛	In my chat sessions, what caused most errors?
🔌	Search my chat history which MCPs I use most in the past 10 days
🤔	What are questions I didn't ask yet about my chat sessions, but SHOULD have asked?

🚀 Features

🌲 Session Tree View

Browse all Copilot Chat sessions stored on disk — workspace sessions, global (empty window) sessions, and transferred sessions. Expand each session to see individual turns with their prompts and responses.

The view toolbar provides:

Sort & Filter… — one button opens a picker with three sections: Sort (date / turns / name), Workspace (All sessions · This workspace · All workspaces · Empty Window · Transferred), and Time range (all time · last 7d / 30d / 90d). The current selection in each section is marked with a checkmark. The active filter is shown in the view's subtitle.
Switch to Recent View / Switch to Sessions View — toggle between the grouped sessions tree and a flat recent-messages view that streams in the latest turns with their full prompt and response content.

🔍 Search Conversations

Use the Session Trace: Search Conversations command (Ctrl+Shift+P) to fuzzy-search across all indexed prompts, responses, and session titles using full-text search backed by SQLite FTS5.

🤖 `#searchChatSessions` Language Model Tool

In Copilot Chat, reference #searchChatSessions to query your history with natural language, SQL, or full-text search:

What did I ask about React hooks last week? #searchChatSessions

The tool supports three query modes:

Mode	Description
`describe`	Schema overview: row counts, annotation distribution, top tools, models, and date range
`query`	Full-text search via FTS5 with BM25 ranking (implicit AND, supports OR/NOT)
`sql`	Read-only SQL SELECT for aggregations, complex filters, and joins

📖 Usage

Install the extension.
Open the Session Trace activity bar panel (speech-bubble icon).
Sessions are discovered and indexed automatically on activation.
Use the Refresh button to re-index after new sessions are created.
Click Sort & Filter… to narrow or reorder the session list, including filtering to the current workspace only.
Click the Switch to Recent View button to browse the latest conversation turns inline.
Click the Search icon or run Session Trace: Search Conversations to search.

🗄️ Data Storage

The extension discovers .jsonl session files from VS Code's user data directory (derived from ExtensionContext.globalStorageUri). It supports:

Path	Description
`User/globalStorage/emptyWindowChatSessions/`	Global (empty window) sessions
`User/globalStorage/transferredChatSessions/`	Transferred sessions
`User/workspaceStorage/{hash}/chatSessions/`	Per-workspace sessions

The SQLite index is stored in the extension's global storage directory and is rebuilt incrementally.

📋 Requirements

VS Code ^1.99.0
GitHub Copilot Chat extension

⚙️ Extension Settings

This extension contributes no user-configurable settings.

Session Trace

Harald Kirschner

Session Trace

✨ Try It Out

🚀 Features

🌲 Session Tree View

🔍 Search Conversations

🤖 #searchChatSessions Language Model Tool

📖 Usage

🗄️ Data Storage

📋 Requirements

⚙️ Extension Settings

🤖 `#searchChatSessions` Language Model Tool