superpowers/skills/diagnosing-superpowers/references/claude-code-sessions.md

Claude Code session store

Verified against: Claude Code 2.1.247 (transcript version field), macOS. When a field below is missing from the file in front of you, trust the file and say so in coverage notes.

Where

• Main transcript: ~/.claude/projects/<cwd-slug>/<sessionId>.jsonl, where <cwd-slug> is the working directory with every / replaced by - (e.g. /tmp/work → -tmp-work).
• Subagent transcripts: ~/.claude/projects/<cwd-slug>/<sessionId>/subagents/agent-<agentId>.jsonl, each with a sibling agent-<agentId>.meta.json (agentType, description, toolUseId, spawnDepth, optional model).
• Plugin registry: ~/.claude/plugins/installed_plugins.json — per plugin: installPath, version, installedAt, lastUpdated, gitCommitSha.
• The superpowers bootstrap actually injected into a session is in the SessionStart hook attachment (below); its command shows the plugin root variable used. A dev checkout loaded with --plugin-dir will not be in the registry, so report both the registry entry and the hook evidence.

Which file is the current session

The most recently modified .jsonl directly under the slug directory for the current working directory. Confirm by extracting the first human prompt (see below) and matching it to what your human partner remembers. If two files are close in mtime, show both first prompts and ask.

Line types

Every line is one JSON object. type values seen: user, assistant, attachment, system, plus session-level records (permission-mode, mode, bridge-session, last-prompt, ai-title, atis-latch, pr-link, queue-operation, relocated, worktree-state).

Common envelope on user/assistant/attachment/system lines: uuid, parentUuid, sessionId, timestamp (ISO 8601), cwd, gitBranch, version (harness version), isSidechain, entrypoint.

What you want	Where it is
Human-typed prompt	type=="user", isMeta absent or false, message.content is a string or a list whose first block is type:"text". Lines whose first block is tool_result are tool results, not prompts. <system-reminder> text inside a prompt is injected, not typed.
Assistant text / tool calls	type=="assistant", message.content[] blocks of type:"text" or type:"tool_use" (id, name, input).
Tool result	type=="user", message.content[0].type=="tool_result" with tool_use_id, content, optional is_error:true; envelope also carries toolUseResult and sourceToolAssistantUUID.
Model	message.model on assistant lines.
Tokens	message.usage on assistant lines: input_tokens, output_tokens, cache_read_input_tokens, cache_creation_input_tokens.
Skill invocation	tool_use block with name:"Skill" and input.skill (e.g. superpowers:brainstorming); the tool result line has toolUseResult.commandName.
Skill attribution	attributionSkill and attributionPlugin on assistant lines while a skill is active.
Subagent dispatch	tool_use with name:"Agent" (input.description, input.subagent_type, input.prompt); the subagent's own file is matched by toolUseId in its .meta.json. Subagent lines have isSidechain:true and agentId.
Hook output	type=="attachment", attachment.type hook_success/hook_failure, attachment.hookName (e.g. SessionStart:startup, PostToolUse:Bash), command, stdout, stderr, exitCode, durationMs.
Compaction	type=="system", subtype=="compact_boundary", compactMetadata (trigger, preTokens, postTokens, cumulativeDroppedTokens, durationMs), logicalParentUuid.
Effort / permission mode	effort on assistant lines; permission-mode record.

Safe extraction

Lines can exceed a megabyte. Never print a whole line. Check size first:

F=~/.claude/projects/<slug>/<id>.jsonl
wc -lc "$F"
awk '{ if (length($0) > 100000) print NR, length($0) }' "$F"   # long lines

With jq (preferred):

jq -r '.type' "$F" | sort | uniq -c                                    # line-type census
jq -r 'select(.type=="user" and .isMeta!=true and ((.message.content|type)=="string" or .message.content[0].type=="text"))
       | "\(input_line_number)\t\(.timestamp)\t\((.message.content|if type=="string" then . else .[0].text end)[0:160])"' "$F"   # human prompts
jq -c 'select(.type=="assistant") | .message.content[]? | select(.type=="tool_use")
       | {name, id, input: (.input|tostring|.[0:120])}' "$F"           # tool calls
jq -r 'select(.type=="assistant") | .message.content[]? | select(.type=="tool_use" and .name=="Skill") | .input.skill' "$F"   # skill invocations
jq -c 'select(.type=="assistant") | {ts:.timestamp, model:.message.model, skill:.attributionSkill,
       u:(.message.usage|{input_tokens,output_tokens,cache_read_input_tokens,cache_creation_input_tokens})}' "$F"   # per-message usage
jq -c 'select(.subtype=="compact_boundary") | {line:input_line_number, ts:.timestamp,
       m:(.compactMetadata|{trigger,preTokens,postTokens,cumulativeDroppedTokens,durationMs})}' "$F"   # compactions (full compactMetadata also has UUID lists; keep this trimmed)
jq -c 'select(.type=="attachment" and (.attachment.type|startswith("hook"))) | {line:input_line_number, hook:.attachment.hookName, exit:.attachment.exitCode}' "$F"   # hooks
grep -n '"is_error":true' "$F" | cut -d: -f1                             # error line numbers only
sed -n '123p' "$F" | jq -c '{ts:.timestamp, first:((.message.content // "") as $c
       | ($c | if type=="array" then ($c[0] // "") else $c end) | tostring | .[0:400])}'   # one line, trimmed (content is sometimes a bare string, sometimes absent)

Without jq, the same with python3 (one line per record, print only what you asked for):

python3 -c 'import json,sys
for n,l in enumerate(open(sys.argv[1]),1):
    o=json.loads(l)
    if o.get("type")=="assistant":
        for b in o["message"].get("content",[]):
            if b.get("type")=="tool_use": print(n, b["name"], str(b.get("input"))[:120])' "$F"

Subagents

List ~/.claude/projects/<slug>/<id>/subagents/. For each agent-*.meta.json print agentType, description, model; the matching .jsonl is that subagent's transcript and follows the same line format. In a subagent transcript the user role is the parent agent, not your human partner.