claude-export

Anthropic Claude exports can be difficult to browse. claude-export is a CLI tool that converts a raw Claude export (either a ZIP file or a folder) into a fully organized local knowledge base.

It handles conversation splitting, beautiful markdown generation, code block extraction, Claude Projects parsing, artifact recovery, and comprehensive stats generation.

Installation

Ensure you have Python 3.12 or newer installed.

Clone this repository and install it in editable mode:

git clone https://github.com/yourusername/claude-export.git
cd claude-export
pip install -e .

CLI Usage

The primary command is all, which generates the complete output structure.

# Process a ZIP file
claude-export all path/to/export.zip

# Process an extracted folder
claude-export all path/to/export_folder

# Specify a custom output directory (default is ./output)
claude-export all path/to/export.zip --output ./my_knowledge_base

Modular Commands

Each feature of claude-export can also be run independently if you only need specific data:

• claude-export split <path> - Splits conversations.json into individual JSON files.
• claude-export markdown <path> - Generates beautiful, readable Markdown files for each conversation.
• claude-export projects <path> - Extracts Claude Projects and organizes related conversations.
• claude-export artifacts <path> - Recovers large assistant outputs (like React components, SVG code, etc.).
• claude-export code <path> - Extracts every fenced code block, sorted by language, with smart deduplication.
• claude-export search <path> - Generates a unified search.json index.
• claude-export stats <path> - Generates a stats.json with comprehensive usage metrics.

Directory Layout

The all command produces the following organized structure in the output directory:

output/
    conversations/        # One JSON file per conversation
    markdown/             # Beautiful, readable Markdown versions of conversations
    projects/             # Folders for each Claude Project, with associated conversations
    artifacts/            # Recovered <antArtifact> outputs
    code/                 # Extracted code blocks categorized by language (e.g., code/python/)
    index.json            # Basic list of all conversations
    search.json           # Unified search index
    stats.json            # Statistics about your usage
    manifest.json         # A manifest of all files generated during the export

Features

• Conversation Splitter: Splits the monolithic conversations.json into individual, safely named JSON files.
• Markdown Export: Renders complete conversations with metadata (UUID, Created/Updated times, Message count), keeping formatting intact.
• Code Extraction: Extracts fenced code blocks, attempts to read filenames from comments, and prevents duplicate files using SHA256 hashes.
• Artifact Recovery: Recovers <antArtifact> contents and saves them individually.
• Projects Integration: Reads project JSON structures and groups conversations inside their respective project directories.
• Cross-Platform: Works seamlessly across Linux, macOS, and Windows, using memory-efficient parsing for large files where practical.

Limitations

• Tool use and tool results are preserved as formatted JSON or text within the Markdown files, but complex interactive elements cannot be perfectly reproduced locally.
• Claude's export formats can change over time. If a new schema is introduced, claude-export attempts to gracefully extract as much data as possible using Pydantic's extra="allow" behavior, but some new features might not be fully mapped.
• Exporting extremely massive ZIP files directly into memory might be resource-intensive, though orjson is used for high-performance parsing.

License

MIT License