jsonl-to-pdf

Turn your AI coding sessions into shareable PDFs.

Every conversation you have with Claude Code lives as a .jsonl file deep inside ~/.claude/projects/. jsonl-to-pdf turns those into PDFs you can read, share, archive, attach to a PR, or hand to a teammate over Slack.

$ jsonl-to-pdf
◆ Project   C:\S\my-app
◆ Session   Refactor the billing module to use Stripe webhooks  · 2h ago · 412KB
◆ Include sub-agent conversations? › Yes

✓ Wrote refactor-the-billing-module-to-use-stripe-webhooks.pdf

That's it. Pick a session, get a PDF. Sub-agents nested inline, code blocks rendered properly, page-breaks that don't tear in the middle of a token.

Try it without installing

# npx (Node)
npx jsonl-to-pdf

# bunx (Bun)
bunx jsonl-to-pdf

# pnpm
pnpm dlx jsonl-to-pdf

That'll drop you straight into the interactive picker — no global install, no package.json. Same flags work: npx jsonl-to-pdf convert session.jsonl --dark.

Install

# npm
npm i -g jsonl-to-pdf

# bun
bun i -g jsonl-to-pdf

# or grab a standalone binary (no Node, no npm)
# macOS / Linux:
curl -fsSL https://github.com/marius-bughiu/jsonl-to-pdf/releases/latest/download/install.sh | sh
# Windows: download jsonl-to-pdf-win-x64.exe from the latest release

The binaries on GitHub Releases are built with bun build --compile — single-file executables, no runtime required.

Usage

# interactive: pick a project, then a session, then go
jsonl-to-pdf

# or aim it at a specific file
jsonl-to-pdf convert ~/.claude/projects/C--S-my-app/abc-123.jsonl

# pipe to a PDF reader, printer, or anywhere
jsonl-to-pdf convert session.jsonl -o - | lp

# list every Claude Code session on this machine
jsonl-to-pdf list

Flags

| Flag | What it does | |---|---| | -o, --output <path> | Output file (default: <title>.pdf). Use - to write to stdout. | | --no-subagents | Skip the conversations of any sub-agents the main agent spawned. | | --subagents-mode appendix | Render sub-agents as an appendix instead of inline. | | --compact | Hide thinking blocks and trim long tool I/O to ~30 lines. | | --no-thinking | Hide assistant thinking blocks only. | | --dark | Dark theme. Looks great on a screen, less great on paper. | | --redact | Strip AWS keys, GitHub tokens, OpenAI/Anthropic keys, Bearer headers, private keys. | | --agent <id> | Force the adapter (default: auto-detect). |

Run jsonl-to-pdf --help for the full list.

Why

• Archive. Conversations get rotated and forgotten. A PDF survives.
• Share. Drop one in a doc, attach to a PR, send a teammate the receipts.
• Review. Read your AI work the way you read code review — at a desk, on a flight, on paper.
• Audit. A signed, deterministic export of what was actually said and run.
• Learn. Hand juniors a real session as study material instead of a generic tutorial.

What it captures

Out of the box, jsonl-to-pdf keeps the full fidelity of the session:

• Every user prompt and assistant response
• Thinking blocks (the model's internal reasoning)
• Every tool call with its full input
• Every tool result, including the full bash output
• Image attachments, embedded inline
• Sub-agents — when the main agent spawned a Task/Agent, that whole sub-conversation is rendered nested at the right place. Recursive. Sub-agents that spawn sub-agents work too.

If full fidelity is too much for the medium (say, you're sharing it externally), --compact shrinks it to the essentials and --redact strips the obvious secrets.

Recipes

Batch convert your last week.

jsonl-to-pdf list --json |
  jq -r '.[] | select(.modifiedAt > "2026-04-22") | .filePath' |
  while read f; do jsonl-to-pdf convert "$f"; done

Attach as a CI artifact.

- run: npx -y jsonl-to-pdf convert "$CLAUDE_SESSION_FILE" -o session.pdf
- uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4
  with: { name: claude-session, path: session.pdf }

Print to your default printer.

jsonl-to-pdf convert session.jsonl -o - | lp

Share without leaking secrets.

jsonl-to-pdf convert session.jsonl --redact --compact

Where Claude Code keeps things

Claude Code writes one JSONL per session at ~/.claude/projects/<encoded-cwd>/<session-id>.jsonl. Path encoding flattens separators to - (so C:\S\my-app becomes C--S-my-app). Sub-agent conversations live as separate JSONL files in <session-id>/subagents/. jsonl-to-pdf list walks all of that for you.

Roadmap

• Adapters for Aider, OpenAI Codex CLI, Cursor Compose, Gemini CLI
• HTML output (for inline web sharing) and a static viewer
• Syntax highlighting for code blocks (Shiki tokens)
• ToC with page numbers (currently: PDF outlines / bookmarks)
• Filtering: --turns 5..15, --only assistant, --exclude-tool Bash

Open an issue if you have an agent that writes JSONL we should support.

Contributing

git clone https://github.com/marius-bughiu/jsonl-to-pdf.git
cd jsonl-to-pdf
npm install
npm test
npm run build
node dist/cli.js list

PRs welcome. Adapter contributions especially welcome — see src/adapters/claude-code.ts for the shape.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.