Backtrack

Backtrack to any Claude Code conversation. Browse, search, and resume sessions across all your projects.

Zero telemetry · Fully open source (MIT) · No paid tier · Works as VS Code extension AND terminal CLI · macOS · Windows · WSL · Linux

The Problem

Claude Code doesn't let you browse or resume sessions from other projects. Your conversation history is buried in ~/.claude/projects/ as .jsonl files with no UI to find them — unless you already know the exact session UUID.

This affects both the VS Code extension and the terminal CLI. Backtrack solves it for both.

Tracked upstream: #34985 · #46862 · #47581 · #20687

Platform Support

Two Ways to Use Backtrack

VS Code Extension

Install

macOS / Windows / Linux:

1. Open VS Code
2. Cmd+Shift+X (macOS) or Ctrl+Shift+X (Windows/Linux) → search Backtrack → Install (publisher: ritik4ever)
3. Click the Backtrack icon in the Activity Bar (left sidebar)

Features

• All Sessions panel — every session across every project, grouped by Project / Date / Flat
• Bookmarked panel — pinned sessions that persist across restarts
• Full-text search — searches titles, previews, and raw .jsonl file content
• Session viewer — full conversation with code blocks, tool-use, collapsible thinking blocks
• Resume — right-click any session → Resume in Terminal → runs claude --resume <id>
• Export to Markdown — save full conversation with metadata header
• Auto-refresh — watches ~/.claude/projects/ for new sessions (debounced 2s)
• WSL auto-detection — finds Windows .claude when running inside WSL

Sidebar Controls

BACKTRACK
├── ALL SESSIONS          🔍 search  ⇄ group  🔄 refresh
│   ├── 📁 stellarhack  (2 sessions)
│   │   ├── 💬 i was working on lodestar...     5d ago
│   │   └── 💬 Build a production-grade Web3…   1w ago
│   ├── 📁 connow  (1 session)
│   │   └── 💬 # ConnectNow — Complete Claude…  2w ago
│   └── ...
└── BOOKMARKED
    └── 💬 Pinned session title

Context Menu (right-click a session)

Configuration

Open Settings → search Backtrack:

Commands (Command Palette)

• macOS: Cmd+Shift+P
• Windows/Linux: Ctrl+Shift+P

All commands are under the Backtrack category:

Terminal CLI

Install

# Clone and set up
git clone https://github.com/ritik4ever/backtrack
cd backtrack
npm install
npm run compile
npm link          # makes 'backtrack' available globally in your terminal

Works on macOS, Windows (PowerShell/cmd), WSL, and Linux — no extra setup needed.

Usage

backtrack                    # Interactive fuzzy picker (recommended)
backtrack list               # List all sessions grouped by project
backtrack search <query>     # Filter sessions by keyword
backtrack resume <id>        # Resume a specific session by ID or prefix
backtrack --help             # Show help

Interactive Picker

Run backtrack with no arguments to open the interactive picker:

 BACKTRACK  18 sessions · 12 projects
 ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  / stellarhack▌  3 matches
 ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  ▶ stellarhack    i was working on lodestar with the h…      5d ago    1241msg
    stellarhack    Build a production-grade Web3 app…         1w ago     410msg
    session        # Claude Code Prompt — Build Backtrack…   just now   342msg

  ↑↓ navigate · Enter resume · Esc/q quit · Type to search

Controls:

Examples

# Find sessions about a specific project
backtrack search myproject

# Resume using just the first 8 chars of the ID
backtrack resume c7e9dcfe

# List sessions and pipe to grep
backtrack list | grep "1w ago"

How It Works

Backtrack reads .jsonl files from ~/.claude/projects/*/ using only Node.js built-ins (fs, readline, path) — zero npm runtime dependencies.

It decodes encoded folder names back to readable paths:

c--Users-ritik-Desktop-stellarhack  →  C:/Users/ritik/Desktop/stellarhack  (Windows)
-home-ritik-projects-myapp          →  /home/ritik/projects/myapp           (macOS/Linux)
-Users-ritik-projects-myapp         →  /Users/ritik/projects/myapp          (macOS)

Your data never leaves your machine. No analytics, no telemetry, no network requests.

Bookmarks are saved to ~/.claude/backtrack-bookmarks.json.

macOS Notes

Backtrack works natively on macOS — no WSL, no extra setup. Just install Claude Code and run Backtrack.

# macOS: install Claude Code CLI
npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code

# Install Backtrack CLI
git clone https://github.com/ritik4ever/backtrack
cd backtrack && npm install && npm run compile && npm link

# Run
backtrack

Sessions are found automatically at ~/.claude/projects/.

WSL Notes

If running inside WSL without ~/.claude on the Linux side, Backtrack automatically scans /mnt/c/Users/<name>/.claude/ for your Windows sessions.

For the CLI resume to work in WSL, install Claude Code CLI inside WSL:

npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code

vs Alternatives

Contributing

git clone https://github.com/ritik4ever/backtrack
cd backtrack
npm install
npm run compile

# VS Code extension: press F5 to launch Extension Development Host
# CLI: node bin/backtrack.js list

npm run lint      # ESLint
npm test          # unit tests
npm run compile   # TypeScript compile

See CONTRIBUTING.md for full guidelines.

Project Structure

src/
  extension.ts              VS Code activation + command registration
  cli/index.ts              Terminal CLI entry point
  providers/
    sessionTreeProvider.ts  Sidebar tree (All Sessions)
    bookmarkProvider.ts     Sidebar tree (Bookmarked)
  views/sessionWebview.ts   Session conversation viewer
  utils/
    claudeDir.ts            ~/.claude detection + path decoding
    sessionParser.ts        .jsonl parsing with mtime cache
    search.ts               Fast + full-text search
    exporter.ts             Markdown export
    formatters.ts           Date, bytes, text helpers
  types/index.ts            All TypeScript interfaces
bin/
  backtrack.js              CLI shebang wrapper

Roadmap

• [ ] Stats panel (total sessions, messages, active days heatmap)
• [ ] Session comparison / diff view
• [ ] Export to JSON
• [ ] Session tagging / labels
• [ ] backtrack in PATH via VS Code extension (no separate install)
• [ ] Settings UI webview

License

MIT — Copyright © 2026 Ritik