cli-continues: Instructions file for GitHub Copilot

Parser Review Guidelines

Crash Safety (Critical)

• Parsers MUST NOT throw to the caller — each runs inside Promise.allSettled and an uncaught error silently drops that tool's sessions from the index
• Wrap JSON.parse calls and file-read loops in try-catch with an empty catch block to silently skip malformed data

// Good — CLI continues if one line is malformed
for (const line of lines) {
  try {
    const data = JSON.parse(line);
    // process...
  } catch {
    // Skip malformed line silently
  }
}

// Bad — one bad line crashes the entire parser
for (const line of lines) {
  const data = JSON.parse(line);
}

Required Exports

Each parser file must export exactly two functions:

• parse<Tool>Sessions(): Promise<UnifiedSession[]> — file discovery and metadata extraction
• extract<Tool>Context(session: UnifiedSession, config?: VerbosityConfig): Promise<SessionContext> — full conversation and tool activity extraction

Both must be registered in src/parsers/registry.ts with all ToolAdapter fields populated.

JSONL Streaming

• Stream JSONL with helpers from src/utils/jsonl.ts (readJsonlFile, scanJsonlHead) when applicable
• Never use fs.readFileSync for session files
• Keep only the last ~10 messages in recentMessages — do not accumulate the entire conversation

Tool Summarizer

• Always use SummaryCollector from src/utils/tool-summarizer.ts — never build ToolUsageSummary[] arrays manually
• Call collector.add(category, summary, filePath?, isWrite?) for each tool invocation

Shared Helpers

• Import cleanSummary, extractRepoFromCwd, homeDir from src/utils/parser-helpers.ts
• Do not duplicate these utilities in individual parser files

New Tool Checklist

Adding a new tool requires ALL five of:

1. Parser file src/parsers/<tool>.ts exporting both required functions
2. Registry entry in src/parsers/registry.ts with all ToolAdapter fields
3. Type update in src/types/tool-names.ts — add to SessionSource union and TOOL_NAMES array
4. Fixture factory in src/__tests__/fixtures/index.ts
5. Conversion tests in src/__tests__/unit-conversions.test.ts for all N-1 paths in each direction