vrefer

vrefer

vrefer prints the conversation of another vlx-term session. The target session does not have to be running, and nothing is sent to it — this only reads what it already recorded.

When to use it

Reach for this the moment a request depends on what another conversation contains:

• The user names a session, by title or by id.
• The user refers to another conversation without naming it: "that other session", "last time", "the other branch", "we already decided this somewhere".
• vsearch returned a hit and you need the conversation around the snippet.

These come in whatever language the user speaks; the trigger is the meaning, not the wording.

The failure to avoid: answering "I have no access to other sessions" or asking the user to paste the content over. That is wrong here — you do have access, and this is how. If you are unsure which session they mean, run vrefer --list or vsearch and ask, rather than declining.

Search first, then refer. When the target is not named outright, run vsearch and let it hand you the id instead of paging through vrefer --list.

How to run it

vrefer <session> [--last N] [--range A:B] [--json]
vrefer <session> --ask "<question>" [--with KIND] [--timeout SECONDS]
vrefer --list

<session> accepts, in this order: a full session id, an id prefix of at least 8 characters, an exact session name, or a unique substring of a name. Quote names containing spaces. Prefer the id that vsearch printed — names can be ambiguous.

You get the whole conversation

vrefer <session> returns the entire transcript. Referencing another session means wanting what it says, and a partial record read as a whole one leads to confident wrong conclusions.

Narrow it only when you actually want less:

• --last N gives just the last N messages, for when you only need to know where that session got to.
• --range A:B gives an exact slice by message index, zero-based, A included and B excluded. The msg N anchors in vsearch output are these indices, so --range 40:60 reads around a hit at message 50.