Read Claude Code History

Read Claude Code evidence only. Do not resume the old process, edit its project, or turn a read request into a continuation task. When the user later asks to act, hand the verified evidence to daymade-claude-code:continue-claude-code-work.

Route by the requested result

找「我们之前做的那个 X」（产物类目标）的三个判据

按词搜不到时换这三个判据，别扩词硬搜：

1. 时间约束是第一筛子。用户给了时间窗（「前两天」「本周」）→ 先按 mtime 筛文件系统（find <root> -newermt '<日期>' -name '*.html'），候选面缩到几十条再按形态排。全库关键词搜索应该在时间筛之后，不是之前。
2. session scratchpad 必须在搜索面内（/private/tmp/claude-$(id -u)/**/scratchpad/，macOS 单用户通常是 claude-501）。Claude session 的默认产物落点在那，不在 workspace——「我们之前写的 X」有相当概率躺在 scratchpad。找产物类目标时显式包含它。
3. 恢复出的版本 ≠ 最终版。从 session jsonl 恢复文件（取 Write 的 content）只拿到某次全量写，后续增量 Edit 不会自动合入——恢复产物可能只有真实文件的零头（实测：28KB 恢复片段 vs 2.45MB 完整版）。打开/渲染后觉得「不像目标」时，先怀疑「我拿到的不是完整版」（原路径文件还在不在、session 里还有没有后续 Edit），不要直接排除目标。

战例（2026-09-18）：找「之前做的聚类网页」，十几轮全库关键词搜索无果；目标一直在 9-13 的 session scratchpad（favorites-ledger.html，2.45MB），恢复的 28KB 片段渲染成裸样式被误判排除，用户给出精确路径后才定位。

The requested output wins over the background story. If the user asks for a chronological table of their raw inputs, return that table; do not replace it with a topic analysis because their motivation mentions an incident.

Evidence surface and completeness

By default, discover every active Claude config home and every archive registered in ~/.claude/history-sources.json. De-duplicate physical copies by Session ID and content identity, and use record timestamps rather than file mtime. A result scoped to one explicit --home is a diagnostic slice, not a completeness claim.

Treat Claude's record labels as storage metadata, not authorship proof. A top-level type: user record can contain a command envelope, hook boilerplate, a whole pasted document, agent-voiced text, or a system placeholder. Human text typed while the assistant was busy can live in attachment.queued_command.prompt with origin.kind: human; do not lose those corrections by reading only user records.

Read references/session_file_format.md when interpreting schemas, authorship, sidechains, attachment records, compaction, or file-history snapshots. Read references/hybrid_history_recall.md before building or repairing the optional BM25/vector index. Read references/workflow_examples.md for indexed discovery, triage, and recovery examples. Read references/claude_session_format.md when you need the layout rather than the message schema — where sessions live on disk, how project paths are normalized into directory names, the sessions-index.json fields, and the compact_boundary markers that tell you a transcript was summarized rather than truncated.

Commands

Resolve every script relative to this SKILL.md; do not search the machine for a same-named helper or recreate a JSONL parser inline.

Indexed discovery

<skill-dir>/scripts/history_index.py status
<skill-dir>/scripts/history_index.py recall '<topic>' --provider claude --mode bm25

Expected output: candidate Session IDs and index coverage. This is topic discovery, not a complete recent-session inventory. If a complete list is needed, report that the current bundled inventory would scan raw bodies.

Exact Session evidence

<skill-dir>/scripts/read_claude_session.py --session <SESSION_ID>

# Add this only when the caller intentionally wants to restrict lookup to one workspace.
<skill-dir>/scripts/read_claude_session.py --session <SESSION_ID> --project <workspace>

Expected output: # Claude Code Session Evidence Briefing, session identity, compaction boundary, chronological user/assistant handoff, queued human prompts, end reason, unresolved calls, subagent state, files touched, memory, and current workspace state. The exact reader always parses every physical Session record, including records before compaction; --full only removes output character clipping. It checks active and registered-archive copies, accepts only identical or strict append-only supersets, and fails visibly on divergent copies, multiple Session identities, a missing record-level Session identity, malformed JSONL, or unreadable bytes. With an exact Session ID and no --project, it searches every project across the discovered active homes and registered archives; an explicit --project remains a strict scope. A filename alone never proves Session identity.

Indexed content search

<skill-dir>/scripts/history_index.py status
<skill-dir>/scripts/history_index.py recall '<keyword>' \
  --mode bm25 --provider claude --exclude-session <CURRENT_ID>

Inspect the index's provider coverage and last indexed time. Open only matching Session IDs with the exact-session reader to verify original records. Indexed recall returns ranked prose candidates, not a census of thinking, tool results, attachments, or unindexed records. The raw analyze_sessions.py search entry is disabled for live stores: its date flags filter after reading the files.

Human-input export

<skill-dir>/scripts/extract_user_messages.py \
  <persistent-output-base> --days 7 --group-by session

This produces Markdown and HTML. It separates storage pollution from human prose and recovers queued prompts. Preserve timestamps, duplicates, and Session boundaries; do not add a second thematic classification unless asked.

Deleted-content recovery

Recovery writes files, so keep it separate from ordinary reading. First run the recovery report against the exact Session file, review every proposed destination, then write only after the user asked to recover content. Never restore directly over the current project tree.

Skill usage ledger

Answers "which Skills do we actually use, and who starts them". It is an incremental index (~/.claude-history-index/skill-usage-v1.db): the first index parses every Claude and Codex session once, later runs re-parse only files whose size or mtime changed. Reports read the ledger, never raw history.

python3 scripts/skill_usage_ledger.py index            # --no-codex to skip Codex
python3 scripts/skill_usage_ledger.py report --override user-invocable-only
python3 scripts/skill_usage_ledger.py report <skill> [<skill> ...] --since 2026-06-01 --until 2026-09-24
python3 scripts/skill_usage_ledger.py status           # freshness + what is not covered

Columns: user_command (user typed /X, or Codex $X), model_named (the model invoked X and the latest human prompt contained X's name), model_auto (the model invoked X unprompted), last_model_use, blocked (Claude refused a model call because X is not model-invocable — the model reached for it and could not use it; not counted as use), and the Skill's current skillOverrides value. --override STATE also lists Skills in that state with zero recorded use. Rows group by bare name, which is what skillOverrides keys on; identities lists the qualified forms merged into a row. More than one namespace there (review, suite:review) means same-named Skills were counted together — rerun with --exact to split them.

Read these limits into every conclusion:

• A Skill that is user-invocable-only cannot be model-invoked, so its model_auto count stops at the day it was hidden. Compare use before and after that date, not the lifetime total.
• Codex model use is inferred from the model reading one .../X/SKILL.md; a session that edits or audits X's SKILL.md with plain shell reads looks the same. Several SKILL.md files read by one command are recorded as bulk_read and excluded.
• Not covered: Skills invoked inside Claude subagents, Kimi CLI, and Codex Skills followed from memory without a read. Zero recorded use means "not seen in the covered stores", not "never used".

Read-result contract

Every answer must state:

1. Sources read — active homes, registered archives, exact Session files.
2. Coverage — Session IDs and internal time window.
3. Result — raw chronology or matching evidence, in the requested format.
4. Gaps — unreadable files, missing parent/attachment bytes, excluded sidechains, or any scope that was not searched.

“Not found” means “not found in the stated coverage,” never “never happened.” Indexed recall omits some record types. State that limit and the index frontier; do not present zero ranked hits as a complete label census. Do not call a compact summary verbatim history; it is a continuation aid and must be checked against raw records and the current workspace for load-bearing claims.

Before writing any negative or absolute claim ("never said," "never appears," "could not have happened," "impossible to satisfy"), clear all three:

1. Every record type, not only user/assistant text. A grep for the literal string must also cover attachment (queued_command.prompt), tool_result, and thinking — a record's top-level type/isMeta alone does not prove or disprove human authorship. Classifying hits by type:user vs assistant while skipping attachment is exactly how a real mid-turn human command gets reported as never having been said.
2. The cheap next step before "unrecoverable." Use indexed recall or re-read an already identified Session if that can close the gap. A boundary you have not tested is not evidence of a boundary.
3. A contradicting firsthand account reopens the question; it does not lose to your reading. If the user states they did something and your evidence says otherwise, treat the conflict as a signal to redo (1) and (2), not as a result to defend.

If a tool result states it was truncated or paginated ("showing lines X-Y of Z... do not answer from this page alone"), that warning is binding: read the remainder before any conclusion that depends on it.

Guardrails

• Keep ordinary read modes read-only.
• Do not run claude --resume or claude --continue.
• Do not use file mtime as conversation chronology.
• Do not run a raw whole-history scan. Use the index, or first select an exact Session. A date filter applied after reading every file does not bound work. If index coverage is incomplete, report the gap instead of scanning it.
• Do not share raw history outside the local machine without explicit user approval; it can contain credentials and private business context.
• Do not report a search as complete after a timeout or malformed source.
• Do not assert a negative ("never said," "never appears," "impossible to satisfy") without clearing the checklist in Read-result contract.

Surface contract

First use in a session: run python3 scripts/surface_version.py once and note the 12-char fingerprint — the sha256 of this skill's scripts/**/*.py code surface. If it differs from the fingerprint you last saw for this skill, the code changed under you: re-read this SKILL.md and the references from disk before acting on in-context echoes of them. The fingerprint covers code only; documentation edits do not change it.

CC behavior claims

references/cc-behavior-claims.json is the per-release ledger of every "Claude Code behaves like X" assertion this skill depends on (Read row numbering, tool_use/tool_result ordering, AUQ answer shape, interrupt markers, plan bindings, sidechain semantics). python3 scripts/verify_cc_claims.py --fixtures is the CI gate — exit 1 means the implementation, a fixture, or the ledger broke a claimed shape. --corpus <dir> re-verifies the ledger against live transcripts: exit 2 means the schema drifted, which is a correctness task, not a test failure — update observed/last_verified/ evidence or fix the implementation, and name the drifted claim(s) in the CHANGELOG.

Router and legacy compatibility

daymade-claude-code:local-conversation-history is the cross-provider router. It sends Claude reads and every Kimi CLI request here, and does not replace this Skill's identity or evidence contract. New Codex requests route to daymade-claude-code:read-codex-history.

Kimi CLI is a live surface of this Skill, not a legacy one. It has no reader of its own. Use indexed recall for discovery, then inspect the named session's wire records. A Kimi question answered from Claude data alone produces a false "never happened". Home resolution order is --kimi-home > KIMI_HOME > ~/.kimi-code.

When that default home does not exist, the store is not missing — it is somewhere else, and the tools say so. The Kimi desktop client bundles the CLI inside its own Electron runtime and keeps sessions under that runtime rather than in the home directory, so a machine with hundreds of real conversations answers the default path with nothing at all. The inventory prints the home it tried as a diagnostic line; read that line before reporting an empty Kimi result, because "no home found" and "no conversations" are different findings.

Locate the real home instead of guessing, in this order:

1. Ask the recall index, if one was ever built with Kimi in scope. scripts/history_index.py status prints scope.sources, and a provider: kimi entry there carries the absolute home it was indexed from. One command, no searching. It only answers after Kimi has been indexed once, so it is the fastest path on a configured machine and silent on a fresh one.
2. Read the desktop client's user-data directory off its running process. An Electron app carries --user-data-dir on its command line (ps ax | grep -i <client>). The bundled CLI is not directly beneath it: the home is <user-data-dir>/daimon-share/daimon/runtime/kimi-code/home. Note the final home segment — .../runtime/kimi-code is the CLI install and fails the step-4 test, while its home/ child is the store.
3. Follow a transcript record's meta.sourcePath. The client mirrors conversations to <user-data-dir>/daimon-share/daimon/agents/<agent>/memory/transcripts/days/<YYYY-MM-DD>/conv-*.jsonl, and each record's meta.sourcePath is the absolute wire path it came from, which contains the home. Do not look in kimi-agent/conversation-archive.json — that file holds titles and timestamps only, with no path of any kind.
4. Confirm before using it. A real Kimi home contains session_index.jsonl and a sessions/wd_<workspace>_<hash>/ tree; pass it as --kimi-home once both are present. This test is what tells the store apart from the CLI install directory one level up.

Two schema facts that decide whether a located store reads correctly. Newer builds drop id and cwd from each session's state.json and keep the working directory only in session_index.jsonl, so a session's project must come from that map rather than from its own state file. And the same sessions/ tree holds internal agent runs alongside real conversations, separated only by a directory prefix — title generation, vault maintenance, and skill summarization are machine chatter, not history, and on a real store they outnumbered the genuine conversations.

Kimi coverage check. Confirm that history_index.py status includes Kimi and read its freshness boundary. An unindexed or newer Kimi session remains unknown to recall.

Reading one located Kimi session has no bundled command. read_claude_session.py resolves Claude session files only and exits non-zero on a Kimi session ID. The Kimi surface is inventory plus indexed recall; to show a conversation's contents, read the session's agents/<agent>/wire.jsonl directly and interpret it with the record types above. Say that this is a direct file read rather than presenting it as the same verified reconstruction the Claude reader produces.

The former claude-code-history-files-finder also exposed optional Codex and Kimi branches. Its original instructions are retained in references/legacy_cross_provider_workflow.md as a frozen snapshot for migration and regression evidence only — read it for what the old contract said, never as a description of what ships today.