Copilot Session Tools

Search, browse, and enrich your GitHub Copilot chat history — across Copilot CLI, VS Code, and VS Code Insiders.

Works out of the box with the Copilot CLI's built-in session store (Chronicle). Sessions are browsable immediately; run scan to enrich them with full detail (tool calls, file changes, diffs, thinking blocks) and import VS Code desktop sessions.

Prerequisites

Copilot CLI v0.0.412+ is required. This version introduced cross-session memory ("Chronicle"), which creates the ~/.copilot/session-store.db database that this tool extends. Update with:

copilot --update

Quick Start

1. Install

pip install copilot-session-tools[all]

Also works with pipx install or uv tool install for isolated environments.

2. Browse your chats immediately

No scan needed — the web viewer reads directly from the Copilot CLI's session store:

copilot-session-tools web
# Open http://127.0.0.1:5000/

All your CLI sessions appear immediately with basic data (titles, user messages, assistant responses):

3. Enrich for full detail

Click Scan Now on any session, or run a bulk scan to enrich everything at once:

# Enrich all CLI sessions + import VS Code desktop sessions
copilot-session-tools scan

# Or enrich a single session by ID
copilot-session-tools enrich <session-id>

Enriched sessions gain tool invocations, file diffs, command output, thinking blocks, and more:

4. Search across all sessions

copilot-session-tools search "authentication" --full

5. Use the AI agent skill

If you use an AI coding agent (Copilot CLI, Claude Code, Cursor, etc.), install the search-copilot-chats skill for natural-language chat search:

npx skills-installer install @Arithmomaniac/copilot-session-tools/search-copilot-chats

Then ask your agent: "search my chats for how I fixed the auth bug"

Under the hood, the skill calls copilot-session-tools search and export-markdown.

How It Works

This tool extends ~/.copilot/session-store.db — the Copilot CLI's own database — by adding cst_*-prefixed enrichment tables. The built-in tables are never modified.

Two-tier rendering:

Tier	Data Source	What You See	When
Unenriched	Built-in sessions + turns tables	Session title, user messages, assistant text	Immediately, no scan needed
Enriched	cst_* tables	Tool invocations, file diffs, command output, thinking blocks, content blocks	After running scan or enrich

If new turns arrive after enrichment (e.g., you continued a conversation), the web viewer appends them below the enriched messages with a "new since last scan" divider.

VS Code sessions (Stable and Insiders) are imported during scan from workspace storage. They're always enriched on import since there's no built-in tier for VS Code.

Searching

# Basic search (FTS5 full-text search)
copilot-session-tools search "React hooks" --full

# Filter by role, workspace, edition, date
copilot-session-tools search "role:user workspace:my-project error" --full
copilot-session-tools search "edition:cli start_date:2026-01-01 deploy" --full

# Search only tool invocations or file changes
copilot-session-tools search "git" --tools-only
copilot-session-tools search "Dockerfile" --files-only

# Sort by date instead of relevance
copilot-session-tools search "python" --sort date --limit 50

Search tips: FTS5 uses AND logic — every keyword must appear in the same message. Start with 1–2 keywords, then narrow. Wrap hyphenated terms in quotes: '"copilot-session-tools"'.

Scanning & Enrichment

# Scan everything (VS Code Stable + Insiders + enrich CLI sessions)
copilot-session-tools scan

# Scan only one VS Code edition
copilot-session-tools scan --edition stable
copilot-session-tools scan --edition insider

# Force full re-import
copilot-session-tools scan --full

# Enrich a single CLI session
copilot-session-tools enrich <session-id>

The web viewer's Scan Now button on unenriched sessions triggers single-session enrichment without a full scan.

Scanning is incremental by default — only new and changed sessions are processed.

Exporting

# Export as Markdown
copilot-session-tools export-markdown --output-dir ./archive --include-diffs

# Export a single session
copilot-session-tools export-markdown --session-id <id> --output-dir .

# Export as self-contained HTML (dark mode, collapsible sections, no server needed)
copilot-session-tools export-html --output-dir ./html-archive

# Export all sessions as JSON
copilot-session-tools export --output chats.json

# Import from JSON
copilot-session-tools import-json chats.json

Web Viewer

copilot-session-tools web                    # defaults to port 5000
copilot-session-tools web --port 8080        # custom port
copilot-session-tools web --db custom.db     # custom database

Features:

• Full-text search with keyword highlighting
• Edition badges (CLI, VS Code Stable, VS Code Insiders) with counts
• Repository and workspace filtering
• Enrichment status — see which sessions have full detail vs. basic turns
• Copy Markdown toolbar — select message range, include/exclude diffs, tool inputs, thinking
• Download markdown or copy session URL
• Dark mode via CSS prefers-color-scheme
• Incremental refresh without restarting

Session Sources

Source	Format	Location
Copilot CLI	JSONL events	~/.copilot/session-state/
VS Code Stable	JSON / JSONL	%APPDATA%/Code/User/workspaceStorage/*/
VS Code Insiders	JSON / JSONL	%APPDATA%/Code - Insiders/User/workspaceStorage/*/

On macOS/Linux, replace %APPDATA% with ~/Library/Application Support or ~/.config respectively.

Agent Skills

This repository includes Agent Skills for AI coding agents:

Skill	Description
search-copilot-chats	Search, browse, and export Copilot chat sessions. Triggers on "search my chats", "find in chat history", session GUIDs, or web viewer URLs. Calls copilot-session-tools search and export-markdown under the hood.
scanner-refresh	Research recent changes in Copilot CLI/VS Code repos and update the scanner for new event types.

# Install for your agent (Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code, Codex, etc.)
npx skills-installer install @Arithmomaniac/copilot-session-tools/search-copilot-chats
npx skills-installer install @Arithmomaniac/copilot-session-tools/search-copilot-chats --client cursor

Skills are also available automatically when working in this repository.

Database Schema

The tool writes to cst_* enrichment tables alongside the CLI's built-in tables:

Table	Contents
cst_sessions	Enriched session metadata (workspace, edition, parser version, source format)
cst_messages	Parsed messages with content blocks
cst_messages_fts	FTS5 full-text search index
cst_tool_invocations	Tool calls (name, input, result, status)
cst_file_changes	File edits with diffs
cst_command_runs	Shell commands and output

Recovery: If cst_* tables get corrupted, delete them and re-scan. Built-in data is unaffected:

sqlite3 ~/.copilot/session-store.db \
  "SELECT 'DROP TABLE ' || name || ';' FROM sqlite_master WHERE name LIKE 'cst_%';" \
  | sqlite3 ~/.copilot/session-store.db
copilot-session-tools scan --full

Installation Options

pip install copilot-session-tools[cli]     # CLI only
pip install copilot-session-tools[web]     # Web viewer only
pip install copilot-session-tools[all]     # Both
pip install copilot-session-tools[vector]  # Optional: hybrid FTS5 + vector search (sqlite-vec + sentence-transformers)

Development

git clone https://github.com/Arithmomaniac/copilot-session-tools.git
cd copilot-session-tools
uv sync --all-extras
uv run pytest tests/ --ignore=tests/test_webapp_e2e.py -v
uv run ruff check . && uv run ruff format . && uv run ty check

Acknowledgments

This project was informed by several excellent open-source projects:

Project	Inspiration
simonw/claude-code-transcripts	HTML transcript generation, web viewer design
Arbuzov/copilot-chat-history	VS Code session data format
tad-hq/universal-session-viewer	FTS5 search design

License

MIT License — see LICENSE for details.