Goose

Goose stores local CLI, desktop, and API conversations in a shared SQLite session database. Hansard also reads Goose’s older JSONL session files.

Source IDs

Source	Use it for
goose	Local Goose sessions, scheduled runs, and linked child sessions.

How the import works

Hansard reads sessions/sessions.db under Goose’s data directory, normally ~/.local/share/goose on macOS and Linux, or %APPDATA%/Block/goose/data on Windows. It also checks the historical macOS application-support directory. An absolute GOOSE_PATH_ROOT selects <root>/data/sessions; relative values are ignored, matching Goose. HANSARD_GOOSE_DIR selects session directories and HANSARD_GOOSE_DB selects databases; both accept path-separated lists.

A consistent SQLite snapshot includes committed write-ahead-log changes and is preserved in the raw archive. Each session has its own fingerprint, so continuing one conversation updates it without reimporting unrelated sessions. For migrated histories, SQLite takes precedence over same-ID JSONL files. The shared store does not reliably identify which interface created a session.

Import and keep current

Import now

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

Keep current

Automatic source selection includes goose. For a Custom list:

hansard config sources enable goose
hansard watcher restart

Review the import in the app

1. When the import finishes, open Conversations and selectFilter & sort.
2. Set Source to Goose 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

• Prompts, replies, recorded reasoning, tool arguments and results, and file edits.
• Embedded attachments, MCP resources, tool errors, and extension identity.
• Session titles, working folders, timestamps, models, recorded settings, and child links.
• Per-message requested and resolved model metadata, separately from response models recorded by the usage ledger. The current session model configuration does not relabel earlier messages. Ledger rows without message identifiers are not assigned to particular replies by timestamp alone.
• Cumulative input, output, and cache-token totals. Usage ledgers include compacted requests; per-model splits are used when the ledger accounts for the full total.
• Reported costs and their distinction between provider-reported and estimated values.
• Recipes, extension state, and auxiliary database records in the raw snapshot.
• Global .goosehints and AGENTS.md, project .goosehints, and Goose memory files through hansard memory backup. The bundled memory extension uses its native config directory independently of GOOSE_PATH_ROOT. An explicit GOOSE_MOIM_MESSAGE_FILE is also backed up.

Known limitations

• CLI, desktop, and API sessions retain the common Goose identity. Hansard does not invent separate interface labels when the store omits them.
• Scheduled and hidden sessions use the SDK accounting rules: active delegated work can enter headline accounting, while one-shot jobs appear in the jobs split. Neither contributes human turns or conversation-depth samples.
• Session totals cover only that session; child usage is counted separately. Older stores can lack usage, cache splits, or request-level model attribution. Latest-context counters are never substituted for cumulative usage.
• Message-level usage stays in provider metadata. Accounting uses the ledger or cumulative session totals, which remain complete after context compaction. Explicit zero counters remain in session metadata; missing counters remain unknown. A local synthetic endpoint can supply these values, so their presence alone does not establish hosted billing or metering.
• Unknown content blocks are counted in session metadata. Malformed sessions are reported without replacing a valid archive. Imports allow at most 250,000 sessions or rows per session and 128 MB of message content per session.
• Remote resource links are retained without fetching their contents. Config files, credentials, caches, and runtime logs are not conversation sources.
• Custom hint filenames and referenced hint files are not evaluated. Shared project AGENTS.md files use the regular project-instruction backup.

Refresh an existing archive

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

Reimport after upgrading the Goose parser to refresh model attribution and unknown-versus-zero usage metadata. Changes to scheduled-session accounting rules apply at read time without a reimport.