ccsearch 0.2.0

Search your Claude Code sessions by content

ccsearch

ccsearch searches your Claude Code sessions by content — so you can find which of your many long-running chats discussed a ticket, PR, file, or idea, even weeks later and even after the conversation drifted across topics.

Claude Code stores every session as a transcript under ~/.claude/projects/. ccsearch indexes the actual conversation (your messages + the AI's responses, plus each session's title) — never the JSON metadata (uuids, timestamps, token counts, tool input/output) — and gives you a fast fuzzy browser with a live preview and one-key resume.

Quick start

Prerequisites: python3 (3.9+), ripgrep (rg), and fzf (only for the interactive browser — ccsearch <keyword> works without it).

# macOS / Linux — Homebrew pulls in ripgrep + fzf for you
brew install alex-yanchenko/tap/ccsearch

# or, if you use uv / pipx (install ripgrep + fzf separately)
uvx ccsearch            # run without installing
pipx install ccsearch   # install for repeated use

Then run:

ccsearch

The first run builds a small text cache of your sessions (a few seconds); after that it only re-indexes sessions that changed.

Usage

ccsearch                  # interactive browser — type to search, Enter resumes the session
ccsearch <keyword>        # list sessions mentioning <keyword>, ranked
ccsearch --index [N]      # fingerprint the N most-recent sessions (title + tickets touched)

In the browser:

• type to live-search conversation text; the right pane previews the matched message in full with the surrounding context collapsed.
• Enter runs claude --resume <id> for the highlighted session.
• Ctrl-T cycles the search mode; Ctrl-S toggles the sort (date ⇄ matches).
• Ctrl-D / Ctrl-U (or the mouse) scroll the preview; Esc quits.

The current mode and sort show in the prompt, e.g. anywhere · ⇅date ▸.

Search modes (Ctrl-T)

Multi-word queries are split on spaces; the mode controls how the words must match:

• anywhere — every word appears somewhere in the session (words may be in different messages).
• one-msg — every word appears together in a single message. The default.
• exact — the whole query matches as one literal phrase.

Each mode is a strict subset of the one before it. A single-word query behaves the same in all three.

How it works

Each session is indexed into a small structured cache (~/.cache/ccsearch/<id>.txt, one message per line, plus a parallel .meta with role + timestamp). Both the result ranking and the preview read this cache, so search is fast and accurate even on very large transcripts. The cache excludes tool I/O, metadata, and <channel>/<command> automation lines, so you only ever match real conversation.

The cache stores your conversation text in plaintext under ~/.cache/ccsearch/. It's derived from your existing Claude Code transcripts, makes no network calls, and can be deleted at any time with rm -rf ~/.cache/ccsearch (your transcripts are untouched).

AI thinking text is not searchable — Claude Code persists only a signature for thinking blocks, not the text.

Environment variables

• CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR — read sessions from $CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR/projects if you relocated your Claude config.
• CC_JIRA_PREFIXES — ticket-key prefixes detected for the --index fingerprint. Default matches any Jira-style key ([A-Z]{2,}-123); set your own to restrict and keep lookalikes out, e.g. export CC_JIRA_PREFIXES="ABC|XYZ".
• CC_PROJ_STRIP — pipe-separated workspace-dir prefixes trimmed from project labels (default code-|src-|repos-|dev-|projects-). Extend for your own layout.
• NO_COLOR — disable all color.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Fix
command not found: ccsearch	Brew install: run brew link ccsearch. pipx install: confirm ~/.local/bin is on PATH (pipx ensurepath).
No results / browser falls back to a plain list	Install ripgrep and fzf.
"No sessions"	No Claude Code sessions yet, or config relocated — set CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR to the dir containing projects/.
Stale or odd results	Delete the cache and let it rebuild: rm -rf ~/.cache/ccsearch.
Colors look wrong	Run NO_COLOR=1 ccsearch, or use a 256-color terminal.

License

PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0 — free for noncommercial use.