Continue

Continue’s IDE extensions and cn CLI save conversations in the same JSON session format. Hansard imports those files without starting Continue.

Source IDs

Source	Use it for
continue	Local Continue IDE and CLI session files.

How the import works

Hansard reads ~/.continue/sessions/<session-id>.json and the adjacent sessions.json index. CONTINUE_GLOBAL_DIR selects a different Continue home; HANSARD_CONTINUE_ROOTS accepts a path-separated list of homes. Both relative and absolute custom paths are supported. Symbolic links are skipped.

The session file supplies messages, tool states, context, and usage. The index supplies the creation date when available. Continue does not persist individual message clocks, so Hansard preserves message order without displaying invented times. File modification time determines whether a continued session falls inside the import window; it does not become a measured conversation duration.

Each session file and the index bytes are preserved in the raw archive. Fingerprints include only the session and its own index entry. Continuing a conversation updates the same archive, while changes to unrelated index rows do not reimport it. The shared format does not identify its originating interface.

Import and keep current

Import now

hansard import --source continue --since all
hansard index rebuild

Keep current

Automatic source selection includes continue. For a Custom list:

hansard config sources enable continue
hansard watcher restart

Review the import in the app

1. When the import finishes, open Conversations and selectFilter & sort.
2. Set Source to Continue and setTime to the window you imported. UseFolder to narrow the list when you use this harness in several projects.
3. 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 and account exports never run from here; each needs 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.

What Hansard preserves

• Human messages, assistant replies, recorded reasoning, and compaction summaries.
• Tool arguments, results, errors, cancellation, MCP server identity, and edit diffs.
• Embedded images, remote image references, retrieved context, and applied-rule metadata.
• Working folders, session titles, recorded mode, model IDs or model display labels, and directional token usage where present.
• Per-request cache counts when they provide more detail than the cumulative session fields. Complete model usage splits remain available in Stats.
• Continue’s computed cost remains an estimate. When it supplies only an aggregate estimate, model breakdowns use Hansard’s published model rates.
• Global and project .continue/rules and .continue/prompts, plus project .continuerules, through hansard memory backup. Shared AGENTS.md and CLAUDE.md files use the regular instruction backup.

Known limitations

• IDE and CLI sessions share one source because the file format has no reliable interface marker. Per-message timestamps and a measured end time are absent.
• CLI records can carry exact API model IDs in usage. IDE history may carry only a configurable model display title. Missing values are not inferred from the currently selected model or configuration.
• The audited CLI keeps subagent transcripts in memory and saves their result in the parent’s tool state. Hansard preserves that result; it cannot recover child conversations that Continue never wrote to disk.
• Continue removed its former Hub remote-session listing. This importer covers local files, including sessions already saved locally, rather than accessing private cloud APIs.
• Unknown content blocks are counted in metadata and retained in raw files. Malformed sessions are reported without replacing existing archives. Each source file is limited to 128 MB and each session to 100,000 history items.
• Config files can contain credentials or executable settings and are not evaluated. Provider logs, telemetry, embeddings, and indexes are not used as replacement transcripts. Remote attachment URLs are retained without fetching.
• The CLI’s --resume chooses the most recent session; Hansard does not offer a copied command that could resume a different archived conversation. Use Continue’s history selector to choose a specific session.

Refresh an existing archive

hansard import --source continue --since all
hansard index rebuild

No archive migration is required. Restart the viewer after upgrading to refresh model cost estimates; that calculation does not require a reimport.