# Quickstart

> Import your agent history, find and open a past conversation, and give your agents recall of earlier work.

This tutorial takes you from a new install to reading a past conversation and
recalling it inside an agent. Install the [desktop app](https://www.hansard.dev/getting-started/download/) or the
[CLI](https://www.hansard.dev/getting-started/installation/) first. Pick App or CLI in the first set of tabs, and the
rest of the page follows your choice.

## Import your history

**App**

The desktop app imports your history during setup.

1. Open Hansard. The guided setup starts on its own.
2. On **Find your history**, leave the detected agents selected. Under
   **How far back**, choose **All history**, or a shorter range to finish
   sooner.
3. On **Give your agents a memory**, keep the coding agents that should get
   Hansard's recall tools. In the Mac app, **macOS access** then asks for
   each protected folder your history needs; select **Ask macOS**.
4. On **Build your archive**, check the disk space estimate, then select
   **Start import**. Conversations appear on screen as they are archived.
   When older history can be recovered, such as Antigravity or Windsurf
   conversations the running app can read back, or Cursor models and token
   counts from your Cursor account, **Recover older history** lists it.
   Recoveries run once the import finishes.
5. Continue through the remaining pages, or select **Set up later** on any
   of them. Deferred steps wait at the top of **Settings**. To go through
   setup again later, open **Settings → General** and select **Run setup**
   under **Setup**. Your archive stays as it is.

To use the app in a browser with `hansard web`, set up with the CLI first.

**CLI**

1. Preview what setup will find and how much disk space it needs:

   ```sh
   hansard init --dry-run
   ```

2. Run setup. Choose the sources to import, choose to import existing
   history, and select recall for the agents you use.

   ```sh
   hansard init
   ```

3. Follow the import until it finishes:

   ```sh
   hansard import follow
   ```

4. Check the number of conversations from each source:

   ```sh
   hansard status
   ```

## Find a conversation

**App**

1. Select **Sessions** in the dock.
2. Select **Search conversations**, the magnifying glass above the list, and
   type a phrase such as `authentication migration`.
3. To narrow the list, select **Filter & sort** and choose a **Source**,
   **Model**, **Time**, or **Folder**. **Reset** clears them.

**CLI**

```sh
hansard history "authentication migration" --since 90d
```

Each result shows the date, title, repository, and session ID. To narrow the
results, add filters such as `--repo`, `--provider`, `--file`, or `--commit`.
See [Search](https://www.hansard.dev/guides/search/) for every filter.

## Open a conversation

**App**

1. Select a result. The conversation opens with its messages, tool calls and
   results, file edits, and commits.
2. To change how much detail you see, select **View options** and choose
   **Standard**, **Everything**, or **Messages only** under **Show**. Under
   **Transcript view**, **Trace** draws each turn on a time axis. These
   choices change the display only.
3. To search inside a long conversation, select **Find in transcript**.

**CLI**

```sh
hansard show
```

With no session ID, `hansard show` lets you choose from recent conversations.
Pass a session ID from `hansard history` to print that conversation, or add
`--open` to open its Markdown file.

## Give your agents recall

Recall lets an agent search your archive and read earlier conversations.
Setup adds it to the agents you kept on **Give your agents a memory**. To add
it to another agent later, open **Settings → Coding agents** and select
**Add**, or run the command below. If you selected recall during setup or
`hansard init`, skip to step 2.

1. Install recall for an agent:

   ```sh
   hansard integrations add-to claude
   ```

   Replace `claude` with `codex`, `antigravity`, `devin`, `opencode`, or `grok`.

2. Restart the agent so it loads the new commands.

3. Ask about earlier work. In Claude Code, type `/recall` followed by a topic,
   such as `/recall authentication migration`. In other agents, ask in plain
   words, for example `Find my past conversations about the auth migration`.

To pick up where an earlier conversation stopped, use `/continue-from` with a
few words about it. See [Recall in your agents](https://www.hansard.dev/guides/agent-integrations/)
for every agent command.

## Explore in the app

1. Open **Memories** to see the memory and instruction files your agents keep,
   with the history of each one.
2. Open **Stats** for activity, models, tokens, tools, and estimated spend. Open
   its **Changes** tab to compare recent work with the period before it.
3. Open **Deep Recall** to ask a broad question and get an answer that cites
   several conversations.
4. Open **Projects** to see work grouped by project, and **Graph** to see how
   conversations connect.
5. Open **Accounts** to see plan limits for the agents you are signed in to.
6. Open **Settings → Imports** to review the agents Hansard
   follows and the **Look-back window**. Select **Import export…**
   there to add a ChatGPT, Claude.ai, or Gemini export.

## Import your full history

If you imported a shorter range, you can import everything later with the CLI.
Preview the sources and disk space first:

```sh
hansard import --source all --since all --dry-run
```

Then run the import:

```sh
hansard import --source all --since all
```

To import one source at a time, run `hansard help import` for the source IDs.

## Next steps

- [Browse conversations](https://www.hansard.dev/guides/browse-conversations/) to learn the
  conversation view.
- [Background archiving](https://www.hansard.dev/imports/watcher/) to keep the archive current.
- [How Hansard works](https://www.hansard.dev/getting-started/how-it-works/) to see how the archive is built.