Load context from earlier sessions

Both tools keep every conversation on disk: Claude Code as ~/.claude/projects/<project>/<id>.jsonl, Codex as ~/.codex/sessions/**/rollout-*.jsonl indexed by ~/.codex/state_5.sqlite. The script in this skill reads both, including the other OS side of a WSL setup, and writes an extraction to a file that you then read.

Invocation

The user invokes this skill explicitly, with everything after the command as arguments. In Claude Code they arrive as $ARGUMENTS; in Codex they are the rest of the message after $load.

/load <selector>[, <selector>...] [tactic] [--query TEXT]

Arguments for this invocation: $ARGUMENTS

• /load Security navigation section loads the session whose title contains that name.
• /load codex:0 loads the newest Codex thread; /load -1 the second-newest session from either tool.
• /load Security navigation section, codex:0 loads two sessions into one file.
• /load website redesign actions uses the actions tactic; a trailing word that names a tactic is the tactic, everything before it is the selector. /load website redesign search --query trivy searches.
• /load with no arguments: run list, show the newest ten sessions, and ask which one to load.

Treat the arguments as a conversation name unless they are an index, a tool: prefixed selector, a session id, or a path. Do not run this skill when it was not invoked by name.

Run every command from the repository root with Bun:

bun .agents/skills/load/scripts/load-context.ts list [--tool claude|codex|all] [--limit N] [--all-projects]
bun .agents/skills/load/scripts/load-context.ts extract SELECTOR... [--tactic TACTIC] [options]

Selectors

[claude:|codex:]<index | title substring | session id | transcript path>

• 0 is the newest session, -1 the one before, and so on. A bare index counts across both tools; claude:0 or codex:-1 counts within one tool. The current session is excluded when the tool exposes its id.
• A name matches a title case-insensitively, first as a substring, then as a set of words in any order. Claude titles are the session name or AI title; Codex titles are the thread name or the first prompt. An ambiguous name prints the candidates; pick one by index.
• Sessions are filtered to the current project directory name. Pass --all-projects to widen.

Tactics

Tactic	What it loads	Use when
messages	User and assistant text only (default)	Design and decision conversations; the dialogue is the content
actions	Messages plus one line per tool call (files, commands)	Continuing coding work; combine with git diff
full	Messages, tool calls, and truncated tool results	Debugging sessions where evidence in outputs matters
summary	The tool's own compaction summaries	Free and fast, only exists if the session compacted
search	Snippets around --query hits across all text	You need one fact from a large session
handoff	Asks the old session to write a handoff (runs its CLI)	Best quality per token; costs one full pass of the old session

Useful options: --last-turns N keeps only the last N user turns. --max-result-chars N bounds each result in full. --query TEXT is a substring or regex for search. --prompt TEXT replaces the handoff prompt. --stdout prints instead of writing a file.

Procedure

1. If the user named a session loosely, run list first and confirm the match by index.
2. Run extract. It prints the output path and the size in characters and approximate tokens.
3. Read the file. For a large file, read it in parts and stop when you have what the task needs.
4. Tell the user in a few lines which session and tactic you loaded and the size. Do not paste the file back.
5. Continue the user's task with that context.

Pick the tactic from the session type when the user does not choose one: messages for discussions, actions for coding sessions, search when the user wants a specific fact. Suggest handoff for a very large session and say that it reprocesses the whole session once through the tool's CLI, which costs money and takes minutes. Codex handoff runs with a read-only sandbox; Claude handoff runs with tools disabled.

Caveats

• Transcript formats are internal to both tools and change between releases. If the script prints a parse warning or an empty extraction, say so instead of guessing.
• Codex stores compaction summaries encrypted. The summary tactic shows only the plain messages Codex kept.
• Codex cannot resume some older threads (list_turns is not supported yet, Codex issue #37754). The script reports it; fall back to messages, actions or full for those threads.
• The handoff turn is appended to the old session's transcript, so it is visible when that session is resumed.
• Transcripts can contain secrets from tool output. Extractions go to the temp directory; never commit them or paste raw tool output into a shared place.
• Numbers from list are transcript size divided by four and overstate what a tactic loads.