agent-chat-reader

Read and search Codex CLI and Claude Code chat history from the terminal.

Useful for AI agents that need to recall what was discussed or decided in past sessions, without manually parsing noisy JSONL files.

Install

uv tool install agent-chat-reader

Or for development:

git clone https://github.com/alik-git/agent-chat-reader
cd agent-chat-reader
uv sync --extra dev
uv run agent-chat-reader --help

Usage

List recent sessions (both Codex and Claude Code, sorted by recency):

agent-chat-reader --list

Search across all sessions for a keyword:

agent-chat-reader --find "sim2sim"
agent-chat-reader --find "policy_interface" --source codex
agent-chat-reader --find "side chat phrase" --source codex-side
agent-chat-reader --find collision friction --since 2026-07-01 --limit 10

Separate search arguments use AND logic across the whole session, so the words may occur in different messages. A quoted shell argument remains one literal phrase. Results show text around each match and keep distinct session IDs even when titles are identical.

The first search builds a disposable local SQLite index from the clean turns. Later searches refresh only appended JSONL records and new side-chat log rows. Delete ~/.cache/agent-chat-reader/search.sqlite3 at any time to rebuild it from the source histories.

Read a specific session by UUID prefix:

agent-chat-reader 019eaecb
agent-chat-reader 1bfc739b --verbose     # include tool call summaries
agent-chat-reader 019eaecb --tail 5      # last 5 user turns only
agent-chat-reader 019eaecb --hide-timestamps
agent-chat-reader 019eaecb --format json

What it filters out

The raw JSONL files are very noisy. This tool extracts only:

• Codex: user_message / agent_message events, current item_completed user/agent messages, and text / output_text assistant response blocks. User response items containing injected context or replayed history are excluded. Guardian/subagent sessions (auto-approval bots) are hidden by default.
• Codex side chats: user submissions and assistant text reconstructed from the local Codex runtime log database. Known internal helper sessions are hidden by default.
• Claude Code: real user turns (not tool-result carriers), and assistant text blocks (not thinking blocks or tool calls). Sidechain sub-agent turns are hidden by default.

Use --include-subagents to see everything.

Options

Session reads show timestamps by default. Elapsed labels use the current speaker's role, such as (agent took 8s) or (user took 4m), and only report the time since the previous visible message.

Use --format json when another agent or script needs stable structured fields instead of terminal separators. JSON turns include timestamp, local_time, elapsed_seconds, role, and text.

Session storage locations

The derived search index defaults to ~/.cache/agent-chat-reader/search.sqlite3. Set AGENT_CHAT_READER_CACHE_DIR to place it under a different cache root.

Codex side chats are log-backed rather than normal rollout transcripts, so the tool labels them as codex-side in list and search output. Both legacy UserInput and current TurnInput submissions are supported. Some Codex versions log only assistant message IDs, without the message text. That missing text cannot be recovered from these logs: reads/searches warn when such records are detected, and JSON reads include a warnings field. A search with no matches is not proof that a phrase was never said when this warning appears.

After upgrading from 0.1.6, the disposable search index automatically rebuilds once so chats skipped by the old parser become searchable. Source histories are never modified.

Development

uv run ruff format --check .
uv run ruff check .
uv run mypy
uv run pytest
uv build