Chat Session Experimental

Tested with Discovery App Preview 0.15.21 on macOS. The script also checks VS Code, VS Code Insiders, and the Linux and Windows config folders, but those have not been tested. Don't claim they work.

Everything except archive and render is read-only. The scripts use only the Python standard library.

Setup

1. Set SKILL_DIR to the parent folder of this SKILL.md. Don't assume a checkout location.
2. Resolve the target project's absolute workspace root (ROOT). Default to the current workspace folder.
3. Run python3 "$SKILL_DIR/scripts/chat_sessions.py" <command> --workspace "$ROOT" [...]. Every command prints one JSON object. Read ok before doing anything else.

Shared filters: --origin all|vscode-chat|copilot-cli, --interactive-only (skips automated engine and SDK runs), and --storage-root DIR (extra workspaceStorage folder, can be repeated). Set COPILOT_HOME to override ~/.copilot.

Read storage layout for where sessions are stored on disk.

Workflows

Find a session ("I had a chat with you about project start-up, find it")

1. Turn the request into keywords. Drop filler words such as "chat", "you", and "find". Example: --query "project start up". The search also matches joined and hyphenated forms ("startup", "start-up").
2. If the user says they chatted with you, add --interactive-only first. If that finds nothing, search again without it.
3. Rank results by coverage, then by score. Show the top 1–3 with date (start), title, origin, and one snippet each. If there is one clear winner, offer to open it. If the results are close, use the ask-questions UI and give one option per candidate.
4. If keywords miss, run list and judge the sessions by their titles.

Show a session (launch the viewer)

1. Resolve the session ID with find or list. The current conversation is usually the newest vscode-chat session.
2. Run render --session <id>. By default the HTML goes to ROOT/.discovery/chat-sessions/<id>/chat.html.
3. Open the returned url with the integrated browser tool (load it through tool search if it is deferred). Never open the system browser. The integrated browser only serves file:// pages inside trusted workspace folders, so --out must stay inside ROOT.
4. The viewer is a static snapshot. To refresh a live session, run render again and reload the page.

Archive all project sessions

1. Run archive --dry-run and summarize the results: number of sessions, new or updated files, and total bytes.
2. If the result includes a warning (git is not-ignored), tell the user that archived transcripts contain full prompts, tool arguments, outputs, and telemetry, and could be committed. Ask whether to add .discovery/chat-sessions/ to .gitignore. Don't change .gitignore without consent.
3. Run archive and report each session's added, updated, and unchanged counts.

Archive behavior:

• It is incremental and idempotent. Files are copied only when their size or mtime changed.
• It never deletes anything. If the editor purges a session, the archived copy stays.
• It skips symlinks and *.lock files.
• It writes <id>/manifest.json and a top-level index.json.
• list, find, and render read archived sessions automatically when the original source is gone (live: false, archived: true).

Rules

• Present session content directly. Don't narrate file paths unless the user asks.
• Don't delete or modify source logs under ~/.copilot or the editor's workspaceStorage.
• Session logs can contain sensitive data. Don't copy them anywhere other than the project's .discovery/chat-sessions/ unless the user asks.