claude2md

Convert Claude.ai or Claude Code chat exports to Markdown format.

claude2md converts chats exported from Claude.ai or Claude Code to Markdown format. This lets you efficiently show entire chats to other models or instances until you struggle to remember which transcript of a chat full of transcripts of chats full of transcripts of chats is the right one (aka slopception).

For Claude.ai chats, claude-backup can fetch a local copy of your chats for claude2md.

Features

You can filter the exports to any subset of user, assistant, and thinking blocks. For context management I've found it's often helpful to only export user messages, though obviously for the strongest "continuity" between an exported chat transcript and its consumer you want all context from the prior chat.

We try to include Claude.ai attachments when they're available in the export, but the format we parse right now does not have them embedded in the JSON or anything, so in practice only attachments with extracted_content, i.e. text files, markdown, etc. will be present in the transcripts.

You can branch conversations on Claude.ai (and to a lesser extent in Claude Code), and claude2md can export any branch. You can list the branches of a chat and their IDs with claude2md --branches, export a specific branch with claude2md --branch ID, or dump every branch at once with claude2md --all-branches (each line gets tagged with the IDs of the branches that contain it).

We don't support "Claude Code on the Web" yet, though ostensibly if you "teleport" a Web session to a local Claude Code instance, you can export the history as normal from there.

Install

The blazing fast and memory safe way:

$ uvx claude2md --help  # installed on demand

The traditional way:

$ pip install claude2md
$ claude2md --help

The bleeding-edge way:

$ git clone https://github.com/twilligon/claude2md
$ cd claude2md
$ python3 -m venv venv; . venv/bin/activate  # you probably want a venv
$ pip install -e .
$ claude2md --help

Usage

$ claude2md --help
usage: claude2md [-h] [-v] [-B | -b ID | -A] [-n] [-N] [-u] [-a] [-t] [file]

Convert Claude.ai or Claude Code chats to Markdown

positional arguments:
  file                JSON file to convert (default: stdin)

options:
  -h, --help          show this help message and exit
  -v, --version       show program's version number and exit

branches:
  -B, --branches      list all branches
  -b ID, --branch ID  show messages from a specific non-default branch
  -A, --all-branches  show messages from all branches tagged with branch IDs

filters:
  -n, --name          always show chat name (or "Untitled" if none)
  -N, --no-name       never show chat name
  -u, --user          show user messages
  -a, --assistant     show assistant messages
  -t, --thinking      show thinking blocks

Examples

Claude.ai

$ claude2md -uat ~/.local/share/claude-backup/f50d0792-fa79-4d2d-a945-c8f709e9e7a7/c6a33008-39b3-45ed-a00e-413141c89a90.json | head -n20
# Python packaging complexity

> why is python packaging such a clusterfuck? ultrathink

<thinking>
The user is asking about Python packaging and why it's so complicated/messy. They've also said "ultrathink" which I interpret as wanting a very thorough, deep analysis.

This is a great question that many Python developers have strong feelings about. Let me think through the historical and technical reasons why Python packaging became so complex.

Key issues to cover:
1. Historical evolution - how we got here
2. Multiple competing tools and standards
3. The various problems each tool tries to solve
4. Why there's no single "right" way
5. The current state and attempts to fix things

Let me structure this thoughtfully and comprehensively since they asked for "ultrathink."
</thinking>

Python packaging *is* notoriously complex, and there are deep historical and technical reasons for this. Let me break down why it became such a mess:

Claude Code

$ claude2md ~/.claude/projects/-home-claude-claude2md/0c8de429-fb29-4096-925e-6d81a0437f09.jsonl | head -n3
> rename --leaves and --leaf to --branches and --branch. no need to change how we refer to this stuff internally, only user facing matters. in @claude2md/__init__.py . ultrathink

I'll help you rename the command-line arguments from `--leaves`/`--leaf` to `--branches`/`--branch` in the user-facing interface. Let me start by creating a todo list for this task.

License

claude2md is dedicated to the public domain where possible via CC0-1.0.