Claude Desktop Migration Tool

A small, unofficial Windows toolkit for moving your Claude Desktop (Cowork / "agent mode") conversations to a new PC — or recovering them after a reinstall — including the full transcripts, not just the titles.

Unofficial. This is an independent utility. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or supported by Anthropic. "Claude" is a trademark of Anthropic PBC and is used here only to describe what the tool interoperates with.

---

Why this exists

When you switch computers, Claude Desktop does not give you a built-in way to carry your existing conversations across. Copying the app's data folder by hand looks like it works — the conversation titles show up — but every chat opens blank. That happens because Windows has a 260-character path limit, Claude stores each transcript inside very long folder names, and an ordinary copy silently drops exactly those files.

This tool solves that: it copies both halves of every conversation (the title/settings and the transcript) using robocopy, which ignores the path-length limit, then verifies the transcripts really landed on disk before telling you it's done.

What it does

Each conversation on disk is two pieces sitting side by side: a small local_XXXX.json file (the title and settings) and a local_XXXX folder (the transcript). This tool understands that layout and gives you four safe operations:

Mode	What it does	Safe?
Diagnose	Finds your live store and inspects a backup; tells you whether a clean restore is possible.	Read-only
Export	Writes every conversation out as a Markdown file.	Read-only
Restore	Snapshots current app data, copies titles + transcripts in with robocopy, then verifies.	Snapshot + undo
Undo	Reverts the most recent Restore exactly.	Reversible

Restore never deletes anything from the live app — it only adds and overwrites, and it snapshots whatever it touches first so Undo can put it back.

Requirements

• Windows 10/11 with PowerShell (built in) and robocopy (built in).
• Claude Desktop installed and signed into the same account on the new PC.

Quick start — move to a new PC

On the OLD PC

1. Fully quit Claude (tray icon near the clock → right-click → Quit).
2. Copy your Claude data to a USB drive. Either paste %AppData%\Claude into File Explorer's address bar and copy that Claude folder, or use Backup-To-USB.bat from this toolkit (it auto-detects the right location and skips junk caches).

On the NEW PC

3. Install Claude, sign into the same account, open it once, then fully quit it.
4. Copy the backup and this toolkit somewhere local (e.g. D:\).
5. Double-click Claude-Migration-Tool.bat and:
   • 1 = Diagnose — point it at the backup folder. Read-only; confirms the account IDs match and how many conversations are restorable.
   • 3 = Restore — same backup path. It snapshots current data, copies everything in, and prints a line like 354 conversations, 354 with transcripts, 0 blank.
   • Start Claude and open an old conversation. If the sidebar looks stale, fully quit and reopen once — the list is rebuilt at startup.

If anything looks wrong: quit Claude and run 4 = Undo.

Always keep your USB/backup copy until you've opened and confirmed the restored chats.

The tools

File	Purpose
Claude-Migration-Tool.bat	Start here. Menu for Diagnose / Export / Restore / Undo.
Migrate.ps1	The engine the menu drives. Can also be run directly with -Mode.
Backup-To-USB.bat / Backup-ClaudeData.ps1	Robocopy your live Claude data to a USB drive or folder.
List-Titles.bat / List-Titles.ps1	Read-only: turn the long local_<guid> names into a readable title list (writes a CSV).
DISCLAIMER.txt	Unofficial-use notice and no-warranty terms.
advanced/	Optional. Cross-account / different-username path rewrite (Rewrite-Paths.ps1) plus a self-test. Only needed if Diagnose says the account IDs don't match.

Running scripts directly (optional)

# Read-only check
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File Migrate.ps1 -Mode Diagnose -BackupRoot "D:\ClaudeBackup-..."

# Export everything to Markdown
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File Migrate.ps1 -Mode Export -BackupRoot "D:\ClaudeBackup-..." -OutDir ".\Exported-Transcripts"

Notes & limitations

• "Windows protected your PC" may appear because the scripts are unsigned — choose More info → Run anyway. Read the scripts first if you like; they're plain text.
• This depends on Claude Desktop's current internal file layout (local-agent-mode-sessions\<account>\<workspace>\local_*). An app update can change it — re-run Diagnose before trusting a restore.
• The same-account case (Diagnose says IDs match) is fully automated. The different-account / different-username case needs the path rewrite in advanced/.
• Restore only adds and overwrites; conversations you created on the new PC are untouched.

License

MIT — see LICENSE. Provided "as is", without warranty; see DISCLAIMER.txt.