AI forgets (compact). You don't.
A native macOS desktop app to browse, search, and manage your Claude Code conversation history.
View pre-compact messages, highlight key insights, and resume any session — all from a visual GUI.
If you vibe-code from ~ and have 100+ sessions piled up with no organization — Swob is for you.

Why Swob

Claude Code stores conversations as JSONL files in ~/.claude/projects/, but there's no built-in way to browse, search, or organize them visually. The /resume command only shows recent sessions, and compact discards your conversation context. Swob solves this:

• Pre-compact recovery — Compact summaries collapse the full conversation, but Swob preserves and displays the original messages. Expand any compact section to see what was lost.
• Highlight & annotate — Select any text in a conversation to bookmark it. All highlights are collected in the sidebar — your personal knowledge trail across sessions.
• One-click resume — Click any session to reopen it in Terminal (claude --resume). Batch resume an entire folder at once. Working directory and permission mode are preserved automatically.
• Drag as context — Every session is auto-exported as a Markdown file. Drag it directly into another Claude Code conversation as context — carry knowledge across sessions.

Features

Browse & Organize

• Tree view with nested folders, drag-and-drop, and custom titles
• Three view modes: Compact (hide tool noise), Full (everything), and Markdown (clean export)
• Branch detection: auto-merges continuation sessions, separates concurrent branches
• Sidechain (rejected plan) marking with dimmed display
• Right sidebar: session metadata, file operations tree, tool usage stats, skill invocations

Search

• Global full-text search across all sessions (⌘K)
• In-session keyword search (⌘F) with precise highlighting and match-by-match navigation
• Auto-reveals matches inside collapsed compact sections
• Regex support

Highlight & Annotate

• Select any text and click "Highlight" to bookmark it
• Highlights listed in right sidebar — click to jump back
• TOC entries with highlights get a green dot marker
• Powered by CSS Custom Highlight API — zero DOM mutation, fully React-compatible

Resume Sessions

• One-click resume in Terminal or iTerm2
• Batch resume: reopen all sessions in a folder
• Respects --dangerously-skip-permissions mode
• Auto-cd to the correct working directory

Library

• Auto-syncs from ~/.claude/projects/ via file watcher
• Each session is backed up to ~/Documents/Swob/ with readable Markdown transcript
• Native file drag-and-drop (drag a session to Finder, Notes, etc.)

Install

macOS (Apple Silicon / Intel)

Download the latest .dmg from Releases.

Build from Source

git clone https://github.com/IvyYang1999/swob.git
cd swob
npm install
npm run dev          # development with hot reload
npm run build:mac    # produces .dmg in dist/

Requirements

• macOS (Apple Silicon or Intel)
• Claude Code installed (Swob reads session files from ~/.claude/projects/)

How It Works

Swob reads the JSONL conversation logs that Claude Code stores on disk. It parses session files, detects multi-file continuations and branches, reconstructs pre-compact history, and presents everything in a visual interface. Your data stays local — Swob never uploads anything.

Tech Stack

Electron + React 19 + TypeScript + Zustand + Tailwind CSS 4, built with electron-vite.

Related

• claude --resume — Built-in session resume (limited to recent sessions)
• awesome-claude-code — Curated list of Claude Code tools

License

AGPL-3.0