cross-session-memory

Cross-Session Memory & Continuity

Why This is Copilot-Exclusive

Copilot CLI maintains a cross-session history store — a read-only SQLite database (session_store) that contains conversation history, file references, and full-text search across all your past sessions. Combined with /resume to continue previous sessions and session artifacts stored in files/, this creates persistent memory across your development workflow. Claude Code sessions are ephemeral — when a session ends, its context is gone.

When to Use

• Resuming work on a multi-day task
• Searching past sessions for how you solved a similar problem before
• Building on artifacts (plans, analyses, configs) from previous sessions
• Maintaining context continuity across terminal restarts
• Reviewing what you accomplished in past sessions

Workflow

1. Resume a Previous Session

Use the /resume command to pick up where you left off:

/resume

This lists your recent sessions. Select one to continue with full context restored, including conversation history, file state, and session database.

2. Search Across Sessions

Option A: /chronicle for fast discovery

Start broad with natural-language history lookup:

/experimental on
/chronicle "authentication work from last week"
/chronicle "Redis caching setup"
/chronicle "what did we decide about the payment module architecture?"

If /chronicle is unavailable in your current build, enable experimental commands first. Use /chronicle to find the most relevant sessions, decisions, or artifacts quickly. Once you know which session matters, switch to SQL when you need exact filtering or reproducible queries.

Option B: SQL via session_store

Query the session_store database to find past work:

-- Prefer the search index for text lookup, then join back to sessions
sql(database: "session_store",
    query: "
      SELECT s.id, s.summary, si.source_type
      FROM search_index si
      JOIN sessions s ON s.id = si.session_id
      WHERE search_index MATCH 'authentication OR auth OR login'
      ORDER BY s.updated_at DESC
      LIMIT 10
    ")