Total Recall: Local Knowledge Graph for Claude Code Conversation History
What Total Recall Does
Total Recall solves the problem of re-explaining decisions across Claude Code sessions by making conversation history searchable. Claude Code stores conversations as JSONL files in ~/.claude/projects/, with each line containing a message object (role, content, timestamps, ID, parentUuid). These parent references form a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) because conversations branch with tool calls and interruptions.
Technical Implementation
The system ingests JSONL transcripts into a SQLite database with:
- Full-text search
- Vector embeddings using local Ollama (no cloud) with nomic-embed-text
- Semantic cross-linking
- DAG-aware retrieval that walks parent chains backward from search hits
- Project-based session tagging
When you ask a question like "What was that restaurant with the great chile rellenos?", Claude queries the database and returns actual conversation excerpts with surrounding context, not summaries.
Additional Features
- A "where were we" script shows the last 20 messages from the most recent session
- ChatGPT importer that authenticates via Playwright and calls the backend API to pull full conversation trees with timestamps, model metadata, DALL-E images, and code interpreter outputs
- Auto-ingests every 15 minutes
- Everything is local - one file you can copy to another machine
Current Deployment
The creator's deployment handles:
- 28K chunks
- 63K semantic links
- 255 MB storage
- 49 sessions across 6 projects
Open Source Availability
The repository at https://github.com/aguywithcode/total-recall contains:
- Full pipeline (ingest, embed, link, retrieve, browse)
- ChatGPT scraper
- Setup instructions
- CLAUDE.md integration guide
- Background documentation with the full build story
📖 Read the full source: r/ClaudeAI
👀 See Also
Skynet: Multi-Agent Collaboration Network for Claude Code Agents
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An IT operations professional built an 8-layer defense framework to enforce Claude Code rules after discovering that both CLAUDE.md prompts and blocking hooks could be bypassed. The approach adapts the Swiss cheese model from accident investigation to prevent workarounds.
CAP: Claude Code Statusline Plugin That Installs with /plugin install
CAP (Claude Allowance Pulse) is a statusline plugin for Claude Code that installs via /plugin install without npm, curl, or jq. It displays model usage, session and weekly limits, context window usage, and session cost in the terminal.
Claude Code Skill Converts Stitch Designs to Next.js with Zero Pixel Drift
A Claude Code skill converts Google Stitch AI designs to Next.js components with mandatory verification checkpoints to prevent pixel drift, preserving exact values and handling assets.