wims: where is my session

Find, preview and resume any Claude Code session, from any folder.

You started a Claude Code session about that webhook bug. It was a good session. It was also three days and forty folders ago, and claude --resume only lists sessions for the directory you happen to be standing in. So you either remember where you were, or you lose the thread.

wims lists every Claude Code session on your machine, wherever you started it. Search it, preview it, hit enter, and your shell lands in that folder with the conversation resumed.

Install

Requires Node 20+, and the claude CLI to actually resume anything.

From npm

npm install -g @pluginslab/wims

That gives you the wims-tui binary. To get the wims command that also moves your shell, install the shell function once:

mkdir -p ~/.config/wims
wims-tui --print-shim > ~/.config/wims/wims.sh
echo '[ -f ~/.config/wims/wims.sh ] && . ~/.config/wims/wims.sh' >> ~/.zshrc

Use ~/.bashrc for bash. For fish, drop it straight into the autoload directory and skip the sourcing line entirely:

wims-tui --print-shim fish > ~/.config/fish/functions/wims.fish

Open a new shell and run wims.

Writing the shim to a file is deliberate. eval "$(wims-tui --print-shim)" in your rc file also works, but it starts Node on every single shell you open.

From source

git clone https://github.com/pluginslab/wims.git
cd wims
./install.sh

The installer builds the TUI, links wims-tui into ~/.local/bin, and adds the wims function to your shell rc file (zsh, bash and fish are detected). Reverse all of it with ./install.sh --uninstall.

Usage

wims                  # every session, newest first
wims webhook          # open with a filter already applied
wims --here           # only sessions started in this directory or below
wims --all            # include one-off sessions (fewer than 2 real prompts)
wims --json           # machine-readable dump, no TUI
wims --yolo           # start with --dangerously-skip-permissions armed

Keys

| Key | Action | | ----------- | --------------------------------------------------------- | | type | fuzzy filter on session title and folder path | | /text | full-text search across every prompt you have ever sent | | ↑ ↓ | move the selection | | PgUp/PgDn | jump a page | | enter | cd to the folder and resume the session | | ctrl+o | cd to the folder only, don't start Claude | | ctrl+n | cd to the folder and start a new session | | ctrl+x | arm/disarm --dangerously-skip-permissions | | ctrl+y | copy cd <dir> && claude --resume <id> to the clipboard | | ctrl+d | delete the transcript (asks first) | | ctrl+a | toggle the hidden one-off sessions | | ? | help | | esc | clear the filter, or quit when it's already empty |

Two kinds of search

Typing filters on the title and the folder path. That covers "I know roughly what it was called".

Prefixing with / answers the harder question, "I know I asked about X somewhere", by searching the text of every prompt you have ever submitted and mapping the matches back onto their sessions:

This matters more than it sounds. Claude titles a session after what it was mostly about, which is often not the thing you later go looking for. The session where you designed a dead-letter table might be titled "Add Stripe webhook retries". No amount of typing dead letter will surface it, because those words are in neither the title nor the path. Searching what you typed will find it.

Skipping permission checks

ctrl+x arms Claude Code's --dangerously-skip-permissions for whatever you launch next. While it is on, the header carries a red ⚠ SKIP PERMISSIONS badge and the footer reads ↵ resume WITHOUT permission checks. A flag this sharp should never be armed invisibly.

• Applies to enter (resume) and ctrl+n (new session).
• Included in the command ctrl+y copies.
• Ignored by ctrl+o, which only ever cds and never starts Claude.
• Armed per run. Quit wims and it is off again. wims --yolo starts it on.

Armed, Claude runs every tool call (file writes, shell commands) without asking first. The shell shim passes through only this one exact flag, never arbitrary text.

Why a shell function?

Because no program can change its parent shell's working directory. wims-tui is the binary that draws the list; the wims shell function is what runs the cd. That indirection is the whole reason your shell stays in the session's folder after Claude exits.

Without the function, wims-tui still works. It launches Claude in the right folder, but your shell returns to where it started.

How it works

Claude Code keeps a JSONL transcript per session under ~/.claude/projects/<encoded-path>/<session-id>.jsonl, plus a global prompt log at ~/.claude/history.jsonl. wims reads those, and nothing else.

Three things keep it instant across hundreds of megabytes of transcripts:

• It never reads the middle of a transcript. Everything it needs sits at the two ends. cwd, gitBranch and version land in the first entry, while Claude's own ai-title and your last-prompt are rewritten near the tail. It reads a 64 KB window from each end and skips everything between.
• Prompt counts come from history.jsonl, which is a few MB and already indexed by session, rather than being counted across the transcripts.
• Results are cached in <claude-config>/wims/cache.json, keyed by each file's path, size and mtime. Transcripts are append-only, so only changed files are re-read.

On a real machine with 125 sessions and ~330 MB of transcripts, that is ~220 ms cold and ~130 ms warm.

Titles come from Claude Code's own ai-title where one exists, falling back to your first prompt, then the folder name.

Privacy

Everything is local. wims makes no network calls and only reads inside your Claude config directory. The one thing it writes outside its own cache is the transcript deletion behind ctrl+d, which asks first. See SECURITY.md.

Configuration

| Variable | Meaning | | ------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------- | | CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR | Where Claude Code keeps its config. Defaults to ~/.claude. | | WIMS_BIN_DIR | Where install.sh links the binary. Defaults to ~/.local/bin. |

Development

npm install
npm run build
npm test           # builds, then runs the suite
npm run demo       # open wims against invented sessions, not your own
npm run screenshot # regenerate assets/*.svg

The test suite drives the real Ink component through ink-testing-library: keystrokes in, rendered frames and emitted actions out. The screenshots are generated by running the real scanner over a fake config directory, so they cannot drift from what the tool actually looks like.

See CONTRIBUTING.md.

Limitations

• The fish shim ships but is untested, written against fish 3.1+ syntax. Reports welcome.
• Deleted or moved project folders show a ✗ and refuse to resume, since the folder is genuinely gone.
• history.jsonl remembers far more sessions than survive as transcripts. Only sessions with a transcript can be resumed, so those are what wims lists.
• / search covers your prompts, not Claude's replies. If a topic only ever appeared in Claude's output, / will not find it.

License

MIT