What is messages CLAUDE.md?

Repository instructions for cardmagic/messages, a command-line and MCP tool for searching Apple Messages stored on a Mac. They describe its commands, TypeScript structure, indexing process, and fuzzy search.

Use them to build, type-check, lint, test, install, or modify the message indexer, searcher, command-line interface, or MCP server.

They help coding agents understand how the project is organised and which commands to run when changing or checking it.

How cardmagic/messages configures Claude Code

Reuse

Borrowing it

Nothing to install: this file belongs to cardmagic/messages. Take a copy, put it at the same path in your own repository, and replace the rules that are about this project with yours.

Copy the file

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cardmagic/messages/main/CLAUDE.md

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/cardmagic/messages

Made for: Claude Code.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/cardmagic/messages/claude-md/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/instructions/cardmagic/messages/claude-md)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/cardmagic/messages/claude-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/cardmagic/messages/claude-md/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/cardmagic/messages/claude-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/cardmagic/messages/claude-md.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 653 This file is loaded in full into every session.

When invoked 653 The same file — it is already loaded in full.

Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.

Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.

Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00653	$0.00653
Opus 5.5	$0.00261	$0.00261
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00131	$0.00131
Haiku 4.5	$0.00065	$0.00065

Measured 2mo ago against content hash 32c4c667380b, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

messages CLAUDE.md scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 2mo ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

CLAUDE.md · 75 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 75 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

CLAUDE.md

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

Commands

pnpm build          # Compile TypeScript to dist/
pnpm dev            # Watch mode for development
pnpm typecheck      # Type check without emitting
pnpm lint           # Run oxlint
pnpm test           # Run tests
pnpm test:watch     # Run tests in watch mode

make install        # Build and link globally
make clean          # Remove dist/ and node_modules/

Architecture

Dual-mode CLI/MCP tool for searching Apple Messages:

src/
├── index.ts      # Entry point - routes to CLI or MCP mode based on --mcp flag
├── cli.ts        # Commander-based CLI (search, index, stats commands)
├── mcp.ts        # MCP server exposing tools via @modelcontextprotocol/sdk
├── indexer.ts    # Builds search indexes from ~/Library/Messages/chat.db
├── searcher.ts   # Queries indexes with fuzzy matching via MiniSearch
├── formatter.ts  # Terminal output formatting with chalk
└── types.ts      # Shared types and Apple date conversion utilities

Data flow:

indexer.ts reads Apple's chat.db SQLite database and AddressBook for contact resolution
Creates two indexes in ~/.messages/: FTS5 SQLite for exact search, MiniSearch JSON for fuzzy matching
searcher.ts queries MiniSearch for fuzzy results, then fetches context from SQLite

Key dependencies:

better-sqlite3: Read Apple Messages DB and create FTS5 index
minisearch: Fuzzy search with typo tolerance
node-typedstream: Extract text from NSAttributedString blobs (messages with null text field)
@modelcontextprotocol/sdk: MCP server for Claude Code integration

Claude Code Plugin

This repo is also a Claude Code plugin with skills and slash commands:

.claude-plugin/
├── plugin.json       # Plugin manifest
└── marketplace.json  # Marketplace definition (name: cardmagic)

skills/messages/SKILL.md    # Auto-invoked skill for message queries
commands/
├── search.md               # /messages:search slash command
└── browse.md               # /messages:browse slash command

Read the full file on GitHub · 75 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

2mo ago First seen · 75 lines · 653 tokens per session scan A 32c4c667380b

Subscribe to this mod's changes

messages CLAUDE.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository cardmagic/messages (20 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 653 tokens to every session, about $0.0026 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

messages CLAUDE.md next to 6 instructions from other repositories
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messages CLAUDE.mdcardmagic/messages	Instructions file	20	2d ago	MIT	A	653	Claude Code
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messages: Instructions file for Claude Code