computer-history

Computer History

Computer History keeps a local record of the user's desktop activity: readable per-window summaries, and the raw event streams those summaries were written from. They are two different things and answer different questions.

When to use

Use this skill when the user asks about their own recent activity — "who contacted me today", "what was I working on", "where did I leave off", "what did I do this morning" — or refers to Computer History directly.

First, find out where the data is and whether it is fresh

Call computer_history_status. It returns:

• state — the recorder lifecycle, including running, paused, stopped and failed. If it is stopped and the user expects today's activity, say so rather than reporting an empty result as if nothing happened.
• summary_directory — the readable summaries.
• event_stream_root_path — the raw per-segment event streams.
• privacy.raw_retention_hours — raw streams older than this are deleted. Summaries are not; beyond that window the summaries are all there is.
• capture_health — current recorder signals and known limitations. A running recorder, a heartbeat or a healthy status does not prove that readable screen content was captured for the application and interval being investigated.

Compare the current date against what you find before treating anything as today's activity.

The two layers

<summary_directory>/
  <segment id>-10min-summary.md     one window, readable
  <6h window id>-6h-summary.md      a half-day, rolled up from the 10min ones

<event_stream_root_path>/
  <segment id>/
    events.jsonl                    every observed event, one JSON object per line
    metadata.json                   when the window started

Segment ids are UTC and aligned to the ten-minute grid, so 2026-09-08T08-20-00Z covers 08:20–08:30 UTC. Convert to the user's local time before reporting anything back to them.

How to answer

Broad questions — "what was I doing this afternoon", "what have I been working on". Read the 6h summaries first, then the 10min ones for a window that looks relevant. These may suffice for an overview. If the user asks for detail, verification or an explanation of missing activity, inspect the raw records before drawing a conclusion. For activity just performed, read the active segment and adjacent UTC segments even if no summary exists yet.