harness-recall 1.1.3

Universal CLI for exporting and searching AI coding sessions

harness-recall

Universal CLI for exporting and searching AI coding sessions from Codex, Claude Code, and Cursor.

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What it does

harness-recall (hrc) parses local JSONL session files from AI coding tools, normalizes them into a common format, and indexes them with SQLite + FTS5 full-text search. You can list recent sessions, search across all of them, view sessions in the terminal, and export to Markdown, HTML, or JSON.

Codex, Claude Code, and Cursor are supported in v1.1. The parser interface is designed to be extended — adding Copilot or Aider support means writing one new file.

Installation

pip install harness-recall

pipx install harness-recall

Quick Start

# List recent sessions (auto-indexes on first run)
$ hrc list
  ID        Source       Date        Project                Title
  019cbc4c  codex        2026-04-06  ~/GitHub/myapp         fix auth middleware redirect loop
  018fa31d  claude-code  2026-04-05  ~/GitHub/myapp         add docker-compose health checks
  018e119a  codex        2026-04-04  ~/GitHub/api-service   refactor token validation logic

# Search across all sessions
$ hrc search "auth middleware"
  019cbc4c  codex  2026-04-06  fix auth middleware redirect loop
  018c774e  codex  2026-03-28  debug auth middleware CORS issue

# View a session in the terminal
$ hrc show 019cbc4c

# Export to HTML
$ hrc export 019cbc4c --format html -o ./exports/
Exported: ./exports/019cbc4c-fix-auth-middleware.html

Supported Sources

Source	Session Location	Status
Codex	~/.codex/sessions/YYYY/MM/DD/rollout-*.jsonl	Supported
Claude Code	~/.claude/projects/{project-slug}/{session}.jsonl	Supported
Cursor	~/Library/Application Support/Cursor/User/globalStorage/state.vscdb	Supported
Copilot	—	Planned

Commands

hrc list

List sessions, most recent first.

hrc list                          # default 25 sessions
hrc list --source codex           # filter by source
hrc list --after 2026-03-01       # filter by date
hrc list --project ~/GitHub/myapp # filter by project directory
hrc list --limit 50               # show more results

hrc search

Full-text search across all session content using SQLite FTS5.

hrc search "docker compose"
hrc search "auth middleware" --source codex
hrc search "fix" --tool exec_command   # sessions using a specific tool

hrc show

Pretty-print a session in the terminal using rich.

hrc show 019cbc4c          # show session (tool call details collapsed)
hrc show 019cbc4c --full   # include full tool call arguments and outputs
hrc show 019cbc4c --turns 1-5  # show specific turns only

Session IDs can be abbreviated — hrc show 019cbc resolves by prefix match.

hrc export

Export one or more sessions to a file.

hrc export 019cbc4c                    # Markdown (default)
hrc export 019cbc4c --format html      # styled HTML
hrc export 019cbc4c --format json      # normalized IR as JSON
hrc export 019cbc4c -o ./exports/      # specify output directory
hrc export --all --format markdown     # bulk export all sessions
hrc export --source codex -o ./        # export all Codex sessions

hrc index

Manage the SQLite index. Index updates run automatically on other commands, but you can trigger them manually.

hrc index             # index new and changed sessions only
hrc index --rebuild   # full re-index from scratch
hrc index --stats     # show index statistics

Browse (Interactive TUI)

hrc browse

Interactive terminal UI for browsing sessions. Features live search, session preview, source filtering, and export.

Key bindings: ↑↓/jk navigate, Enter expand, / search, e export, f filter source, q quit.

Stats

hrc stats

Show session statistics: counts by source, sessions by month, top projects, models used, and token usage summary.

hrc config

Show or edit configuration.

hrc config

Export Formats

Markdown — default format. Clean transcript with session metadata header, role labels, and fenced code blocks. Renders on GitHub and is pasteable into any document.

HTML — self-contained single file. Warm, minimal design with collapsible tool calls (<details>/<summary>), syntax-highlighted code, and automatic dark mode via prefers-color-scheme. Optionally loads Space Grotesk and JetBrains Mono from CDN; system font fallbacks work offline. No JavaScript frameworks.

JSON — the normalized intermediate representation (IR). Useful for scripting or piping into other tools.

How it Works

Parsers (Codex, Claude Code, ...)
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    v
Intermediate Representation (IR)
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    v
SQLite + FTS5 Index (~/.harness-recall/index.db)
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    v
Renderers (Markdown, HTML, JSON)

Each parser reads raw JSONL from its source and emits IR objects (Session, Turn, ToolCall). Renderers and the search index only ever see IR — never raw source data. The index is built automatically on first use and updated incrementally using file modification times.

Adding a Parser

Implement BaseParser in a new file under src/harness_recall/parsers/ and register it in __init__.py.

from harness_recall.parsers.base import BaseParser
from harness_recall.ir import Session
from pathlib import Path

class MyCLIParser(BaseParser):
    name = "mycli"
    default_paths = ["~/.mycli/sessions/"]
    file_pattern = "**/*.jsonl"

    def parse(self, file_path: Path) -> Session:
        # Read file_path, return a Session IR object
        ...

The discover() method is provided by BaseParser — it globs default_paths with file_pattern. Override it if the source uses a non-standard layout.

Parser contributions are welcome. See docs/adding-a-parser.md for a full walkthrough.

Configuration

harness-recall auto-detects ~/.codex/sessions/ and ~/.claude/projects/ on first run. Override paths or add custom sources in ~/.harness-recall/config.toml:

[sources]
codex = ["/custom/codex/path"]
claude-code = ["/custom/claude/path"]

[index]
db_path = "/custom/index.db"

Contributing

Pull requests are welcome. Parser contributions are the easiest entry point — if you use an AI coding tool that isn't supported, adding a parser is a well-defined, isolated task.

Please open an issue before starting significant work to confirm the approach.

License

MIT