I Built a Tool to Stop Losing My Claude Code Conversation History

A few weeks ago I needed to revisit a debugging session. Claude had walked me through a nasty race condition in my app — it took over an hour, and the fix was subtle. I knew exactly which session it was.

I went to find the JSONL file. Gone. No warning, no "this file will be deleted in 3 days." Just gone.

If you've been using Claude Code for more than a couple of months, this has probably happened to you too.

Wait, Claude Code Deletes My History?

Yeah. Claude Code stores conversations as JSONL files under ~/.claude/projects/, and old files are automatically deleted over time. You can change this in settings, but that only solves the auto-deletion problem. /compact still lossy-summarizes your context, and version updates can break session compatibility. Even with deletion disabled, JSONL files are scattered across directories with no way to search across sessions.

What I Tried (and Why It Wasn't Enough)

I tried claude-history (Rust TUI) and Claude Code History Viewer (desktop app). Both are great for browsing, but they read JSONL files directly — once those files get deleted, they can't show you anything either. claude-mem does persist data into its own database, but it's a full memory system with Node.js, MCP server, and semantic search — more than I needed. I just wanted to archive conversations before they disappear.

What I was missing: a simple, durable archive I could set up once and forget about.

So I Built One

claude-vault is a single Rust binary that imports your Claude Code conversations into SQLite with full-text search. No Node.js, no Python, no MCP server — just download and run.

claude-vault import
# Imported 94562 messages (0 skipped, 12847 filtered, 0 errors) from 203 files

Once conversations are in SQLite, they survive file deletion, compaction, updates — whatever happens to the original JSONL files.

What About All the Noise?

If you've ever opened a Claude Code JSONL file, you know it's mostly noise — tool results, system tags, file read outputs, progress messages. claude-vault strips all of that during import, keeping only what matters: your questions, Claude's responses, and code-modifying actions.

Search That Actually Works

Search uses FTS5 with Porter stemming, so "running" matches "run" and "configurations" matches "configure":

claude-vault search "race condition fix"
claude-vault search "deploy" --project my-app --since 2025-01-01

You can also pipe JSON output to Claude itself:

claude-vault search "previous auth implementation" --json

The Part That Made It Actually Useful: Hooks

Manually running import is fine, but I kept forgetting. The real fix was hooking it into Claude Code's lifecycle. Add this to ~/.claude/settings.json:

{
  "hooks": {
    "PreCompact": [
      {
        "hooks": [
          {
            "type": "command",
            "command": "claude-vault import >/dev/null 2>&1"
          }
        ]
      }
    ],
    "SessionEnd": [
      {
        "hooks": [
          {
            "type": "command",
            "command": "claude-vault import >/dev/null 2>&1 &"
          }
        ]
      }
    ]
  }
}

PreCompact captures the full conversation before /compact summarizes it. SessionEnd archives in the background when you exit. Once set up, I never think about it — every session is archived automatically.

What It Doesn't Do (Honest Assessment)

• It's an archive, not a memory system. It won't inject past context into new sessions automatically.
• It's CLI-only. If you want a TUI, claude-history is great.
• No semantic search — it's keyword-based FTS5 with stemming.

It does one thing: makes sure your conversations don't disappear. That's it.

Try It

cargo install claude-vault
# or download a prebuilt binary from GitHub Releases

Seriously, run claude-vault import now. If you've been using Claude Code for a while, some of your old sessions might already be gone — archive what's left before it's too late.

GitHub: kuroko1t/claude-vault

Have you lost Claude Code sessions you wish you could get back? What's your approach to preserving conversation history? I'd love to hear what others are doing.