Claude

Claude sessions come from several places: the Claude Code CLI, Claude Code sessions started from the Claude desktop app, Cowork, Agent SDK jobs, and Claude Code cloud and Remote Control sessions. Each has its own source ID, so import the ones you use.

Source IDs

Source	Use it for
`claude`	Interactive Claude Code CLI sessions.
`claude-code-desktop`	Claude Code sessions started from the Claude desktop app.
`claude-cowork`	Cowork sessions: older local audit files and remote sessions the desktop app has cached.
`claude-cowork-cloud`	Account-wide tagged Cowork cloud tasks through saved Claude Code sign-ins.
`claude-sdk`	Claude Agent SDK sessions, both delegated work and one-shot jobs.
`claude-cloud`	Claude Code cloud and Remote Control sessions. Runs when you ask for it or turn it on in Settings → Imports → Cloud agents, and only reads.

Claude.ai account exports have their own workflow; see ChatGPT, Claude.ai, and Gemini exports.

How the import works

For Claude Code CLI and Agent SDK sessions, Hansard reads Claude Code’s JSONL session files and groups entries by session ID. It rebuilds one ordered conversation from user and assistant messages, thinking, tool calls and results, settings, and token usage. Sessions started from the desktop app are recognized from the launch details they record. Delegated SDK work and one-shot SDK jobs stay distinguishable, and each subagent becomes its own conversation linked to its parent instead of being merged into it. The subagents a workflow starts join the conversation that ran the workflow as its subagent runs. A reply whose rows repeat a partial output count is counted once, at its final token usage.

Forks keep their own session identity and a link to their parent. Copied parent history stays in raw evidence and does not count again in search or Stats. Moving a session store preserves child identities. Existing archive links keep their recorded child IDs after an importer upgrade.

Cowork works differently: Hansard imports older local audit files plus any remote session details the Claude desktop app has already cached. The claude-cloud command uses your existing Claude Code sign-in to read cloud and Remote Control sessions. A session that ran on Anthropic’s workers becomes a Claude Code cloud conversation. A Remote Control session ran on your own machine, so it stays a Claude Code conversation. When it matches a local session by its Remote Control ID, Hansard combines their details into one conversation. It never merges conversations only because their text looks alike. Running an import again updates the existing conversations instead of adding copies. Cloud records explicitly tagged as Cowork are excluded from claude-cloud; sharing a sessions endpoint does not make them Claude Code conversations.

A development build of the Hansard browser extension can also read Claude Code on the web sessions from a signed-in claude.ai tab, without a Claude Code sign-in. Turn on Claude Code on the web in the extension’s settings. Its captures join the same conversations as claude-cloud, so either route can run first, and Cowork tasks stay with the Cowork import. A capture whose last event page says more events follow waits as a failed capture until Rescan all history in the extension reads it in full, so Hansard never archives the conversation incomplete.

Both claude-cloud and the extension skip sessions that belong to other Anthropic products, as claude.ai’s Code view does: Cowork tasks, workflow agents, warm workers that hold no conversation, and sessions tagged for other products. A session that a saved claude.ai conversation names as its workspace belongs to that conversation and is skipped too. The import’s warnings name the reason for each skipped session.

Run hansard rebuild --from-raw --source-type claude-cloud-history to rebuild Claude Code cloud conversations from the responses earlier imports and captures kept, without contacting Claude. The rebuild stops for review when the kept responses disagree or no longer hold a message the archive has.

Run hansard import claude-cowork-cloud --since all to read retained Cowork tasks without first opening each task in Claude Desktop. The command uses saved Claude Code profiles and the provider’s cowork-remote filter. Use --profile to select one profile and --full-events to reread retained events. Enable Claude Cowork cloud in Settings → Imports → Cloud agents for automatic refresh every six hours. Interrupted event walks resume from their last archived page. Desktop cache and cloud captures share the recorded task identity and preserve fuller messages and raw snapshots.

This route covers explicitly tagged Cowork tasks. The task workspace of an untagged unified chat arrives through the browser extension instead: when it captures a Claude.ai conversation linked to a workspace, Hansard archives that workspace as its own conversation, linked to the chat and separate from it. A capture holds at most about 24 MB of workspace events. A longer workspace is archived up to that point, and its import warning names the reason. Both kinds appear under Claude Cowork cloud in the Source filter. Neither route establishes coverage for Chrome, Office, Tag, Science, Security, or Design projects outside Cowork tasks. Each completed Write call keeps the text it wrote, as ordered revisions of that file, and an Artifact call links to the latest completed write of its file. A browser capture also saves the current contents of each file that a recorded call in the workspace names, up to 64 files and 64 MiB. It reads only those paths, so files that no recorded call names are not saved. Run hansard rebuild --from-raw --source-type claude-cowork-cloud-history to replay preserved cloud snapshots without contacting Claude. Conflicting event revisions cause replay to stop for review.

hansard import --sources claude,claude-code-desktop,claude-cowork,claude-sdk --since all
hansard index rebuild

To add cloud and Remote Control sessions:

hansard import claude-cloud --since all

claude-cloud reads your Claude Code sign-in from the macOS Keychain, or from .credentials.json in ~/.claude (or CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR) on Linux and WSL. It also reads every Claude Code profile you registered with hansard account, and imports a session two profiles can both see once. Add --profile <label> to read one profile. It only reads from Claude and never changes your sign-in. Cloud-only sessions are grouped under the Git repository named on the session.

With Automatic source selection, the watcher already includes the four local Claude sources. With a Custom list, enable them. The watcher picks them up within 30 seconds:

hansard config sources enable claude,claude-code-desktop,claude-cowork,claude-sdk

To keep cloud sessions current, turn on Claude Code cloud in Settings → Imports → Cloud agents. The watcher then refreshes it every six hours. Otherwise, run the command again when you want newer cloud sessions.

Review the import in the app

When the import finishes, open Sessions and selectFilter & sort.
Set Source to Claude Code CLI, Claude Code Desktop, Claude Cowork, or Claude SDK jobs and setTime to the window you imported. UseFolder to narrow the list when you use this harness in several projects.
Select a conversation to check its messages, tool calls, files, commits, model, and token usage.

To keep archiving new sessions from a local harness, openSettings → Imports. Automaticfollows every supported harness installed on this computer.Custom lets you turn individual harnesses on or off. Cloud sources turn on separately under Cloud agents, and ChatGPT, Claude.ai, Gemini, and Gemini Notebook / NotebookLM exports import withImport export…. Each also has its own import command. If a conversation you expect is missing after you reset the filters, run the import command on this page again with --explain-skips where the source supports it.

Hosted sessions appear under Claude Code cloud. Remote Control sessions are labeled Claude Code Remote Control and stay in their Claude Code project, or in Claude Code (Uncategorized) when the session recorded no workspace.

What Hansard preserves

Messages, thinking, tool calls and results, token usage, model fallbacks, notifications, permissions, modes, hooks, compaction points, and Git details.
Full saved tool outputs, workflow files, readable tool files, and the related files Claude Code kept next to the session.
Workflow scripts as raw evidence. Hansard does not execute these scripts.
Cowork task, permission, retry, tool summary, selected folder, and attachment details when the desktop cache has them.
Desktop and Cowork model settings separately from recorded reply models. A current setting never fills a missing reply model or replaces the model recorded on a tool-using reply. Per-attempt usage keeps its recorded models.
A Remote Control label only when the session records evidence that separates it from an ordinary SDK job.
A name set with /rename or claude -n, which titles the conversation over Claude Code’s own AI title, and a rename or an agent’s title in the Claude desktop app, which titles it over the app’s generated title.

Known limitations

A remote Cowork session can be imported only after Claude Desktop has cached its details. You may need to open or revisit the conversation there first.
Repeated Cowork cache imports retain earlier turns and raw snapshots when the desktop cache rolls over. Older metadata cannot replace a newer snapshot; omitted model and folder settings preserve earlier values, while explicit clears take effect. Fuller or conflicting archived replies stay preserved with a warning. Raw replay refuses conflicting event revisions.
Cowork retains at most 256 MiB of source snapshots in one import. Missing or damaged earlier raw files, changed cache bytes during capture, or the size limit stop that session’s update and leave its archive unchanged. Other sessions can continue. This cache route cannot establish account-wide history completeness.
When the cache did not keep a remote attachment’s contents, Hansard records only that the attachment existed. Cowork sessions with no selected folder are grouped under claude-cowork/uncategorized.
One-shot SDK jobs are archived and searchable, but Stats leaves them out of its main totals by default.
Sessions that contain only /status, /usage, /exit, or /quit, with no assistant or tool activity, are skipped.

Refresh an existing archive

hansard import --sources claude,claude-code-desktop,claude-cowork,claude-sdk --since all
hansard index rebuild

A reimport rereads Claude’s files. hansard rebuild works only from files already in the archive, so it cannot add Cowork events or Claude Code files that were never imported.

Reimport claude and claude-sdk to recover fork identities, workflow scripts, and workflow subagent runs that earlier parsers left out, and the final token counts of replies that earlier parsers counted more than once:

hansard import --sources claude,claude-sdk --since all

The watcher already re-reads the conversations in its import window with the current importers. A truncated CLI or SDK source cannot replace even a short archived conversation.

To title older conversations by the names set with /rename or claude -n, re-read them with the current importer:

hansard rebuild --stale-parsers --provider claude_code

Reimport claude-code-desktop and claude-cowork after upgrading to correct earlier archives that attributed a session’s current model setting to its past replies. Replies without their own model evidence remain unattributed. If only a partial Cowork cache is available during a parser upgrade, earlier messages retain their parser version and the import reports the pending refresh. Revisit the earlier history in Claude Desktop and import again.

Earlier releases archived hosted cloud sessions as Claude Code conversations. Run the cloud import once to move them to Claude Code cloud. The same run moves Remote Control sessions without a recorded workspace to Claude Code (Uncategorized):

hansard import claude-cloud --since all

To do the same from the responses the archive kept, without contacting Claude, run hansard rebuild --from-raw --source-type claude-cloud-history --since all.

To add the files that completed Write calls recorded to earlier Cowork cloud imports, run:

hansard import claude-cowork-cloud --since all

The same command refreshes recorded repository, worker-status, and other session details even when the provider’s update timestamp has not changed. An automatically Uncategorized cloud session moves into its repository when that information becomes available. Its conversation identity and history remain the same.

The current configured model is kept as a session setting, separately from the model recorded on each reply. It never fills missing reply models or attributes token usage. Parser upgrades reread the retained event history; matching messages refresh only when the returned event preserves their recorded content and metadata. A local Remote Control transcript retains its own evidence.

If the provider returns less history, earlier messages and raw evidence stay in the archive. A warning reports messages still awaiting a parser refresh; the source keeps its earlier parser version until those messages can refresh. Retry the full retained event walk with:

hansard import claude-cloud --since all --full-events

This cannot recover events the provider no longer retains. An older cloud metadata snapshot cannot overwrite a newer archived snapshot, and an omitted session field keeps its previously recorded value.