claude-chat-exporter: Instructions file for Claude Code

CLAUDE.md

This file provides guidance to Claude Code (claude.ai/code) when working with code in this repository.

What this is

A single-file browser-console script (claude-chat-exporter.js) that exports a claude.ai conversation to a markdown file. It runs by pasting the whole file into the browser devtools console while a conversation is open (a one-click bookmarklet in docs/index.html wraps the same script). There is no build system, package manager, test suite, or lint config — the whole repo is the script, README.md, docs/index.html, this file, LICENSE, .github/FUNDING.yml, and .claude/skills/ — none of which any code reads.

To test a change: node --check claude-chat-exporter.js for syntax, then paste the edited script into the console on a real claude.ai conversation and observe the on-page status indicator and downloaded .md file.

main is the release channel. No tags, no releases, no build artifact: the install page fetches claude-chat-exporter.js straight from main, and the update check compares against main. GitHub Pages serves docs/ from main. Merging to main is publishing — every script change immediately becomes what new installs get and flips existing bookmarklets to "update available". The script's hash is the version signal; there is no version number anywhere.

Core design decision

The script reads nothing from Claude's rendered page. It takes the conversation directly from claude.ai's own internal API, whose response already contains each message's source markdown (tables, math, code, etc.) — so fidelity is byte-perfect with zero conversion logic. Reject any change that reads the conversation from the page — DOM scraping, driving Claude's own buttons, intercepting the clipboard, or parsing HTML into markdown. All of it works against the point of the project.

The script contains zero CSS selectors — no querySelector, no aria-label matching, no class names — which is what makes Claude's markup and its localisation unable to break it. It does legitimately touch the DOM, so don't "fix" that: document.createElement and document.body for the download link and the status box (plus its sponsor link), window focus/blur listeners plus a housekeeping interval, a window.__claudeChatExporterDispose marker so a repeat click replaces the box instead of stacking another, a read of window.__claudeChatExporterNotice (published by the install page's update notice while it is on screen) so the box keeps clear of it, document.cookie for lastActiveOrg, window.location for the conversation id. Reading Claude's markup is the prohibited part, not touching the DOM at all.