Session Search

Find sessions by searching across user properties, device, browser, custom events, and pages — without needing a metric or segment first.

When to Use

• "Find sessions where users on Safari mobile visited /checkout"
• "Show me sessions from enterprise users who saw an error"
• "Find the session for user ID 84721 from yesterday"
• "Show me sessions where custom event 'trial_started' fired"
• "Find sessions from users in Germany who visited the pricing page"

Mental Model

Session search is for targeted lookups when you know who or what you're looking for. It's different from metrics (which aggregate across many users) and opportunities (which rank by frustration). Session search is a point query: "find me these specific sessions."

Workflow

Step 1: Clarify the search criteria

What does the user know? Common search axes:

Step 2: Execute the search

By user ID or email:

fullstory:get_user_profile(userIdentifier="user@example.com")
→ returns user's recent sessions with device_id and session_id
→ load each session through session-context agent

By device/browser/page:

fullstory:get_sessions(
  device="mobile",
  browser="safari",
  page="/checkout",
  time_range="last_7_days",
  limit=5
)

By user property (plan, role, country):

fullstory:build_segment("users on enterprise plan in Germany")
fullstory:get_sessions(segment_id=segment_id, limit=5)

By custom event:

fullstory:get_sessions(
  event="trial_started",
  time_range="last_30_days",
  limit=5
)

Step 3: Present results

For each session found, show:

• Session date/time
• User identifier (if available)
• Device and browser
• Key pages visited
• Session URL (so the user can open it in Fullstory)

If the search returns many sessions, offer to narrow by:

• Adding a time range constraint
• Adding a device/page filter
• Combining criteria (e.g., "enterprise users on mobile who visited /checkout")

Step 4: Investigate (if needed)

If the user wants to know what happened in a session, pass it to session-review. If they want to know what a specific user did across multiple sessions, use user-journey.

Common Search Patterns

Guidelines

• Narrow time ranges first — scanning 90 days of sessions is slow. Default to last_7_days.
• If search returns zero, broaden the criteria (wider time range, fewer filters) before reporting "not found."
• Always return session URLs — the user may want to watch the replay in Fullstory.
• For user property searches (plan, role, country), building a segment is one extra call but much faster than scanning all sessions.
• If the user wants to understand what happened in the sessions found, delegate to session-review or session-context — don't try to do it here.