Pick your tool
Eight tools, seven locations, five formats, and two of them delete on a 30-day timer. Each page below shows where that tool keeps its history, the specific way it disappears, and how to keep it — starting with the fix that needs nothing from us.
Transcripts older than 30 days are deleted by default, and nothing tells you it is happening.
~/.claude/projects/<project>/<session>.jsonlOne SQLite file holds every conversation. Corruption, an upgrade, or a cleanup takes all of it at once.
~/Library/Application Support/Cursor/User/globalStorage/state.vscdbHistory is keyed to the workspace path. Rename or move the project and the chat panel comes up empty.
~/Library/Application Support/Code/User/workspaceStorage/<hash>/chatSessions/Nothing prunes ~/.codex/sessions, so it grows until a person deletes it — usually all of it, usually in a hurry.
~/.codex/sessions/YYYY/MM/DD/rollout-*.jsonlgeneral.sessionRetention deletes sessions after 30 days, and cleanup is enabled by default.
~/.gemini/tmp/<project_hash>/chats/One database holds every session, it grows without limit, and nothing else has a copy.
~/.local/share/opencode/opencode.dbThe history file lives in the repo and is normally gitignored, so nothing backs it up and no clone has it.
<project>/.aider.chat.history.mdCascade conversations are protobuf: the file is on your disk and the ability to read it is not.
~/.codeium/cascade/<uuid>.pb