claude-chat-archive

Convert your Claude.ai chat export into a navigable markdown archive.

What it does

Claude.ai's data export is a single 70MB+ JSON. This tool turns it into:

• One markdown file per conversation, named YYYY-MM-DD <title>.md
• One file or folder per project (with docs/ if any docs exist)
• Attachments inlined when small, separated when large
• Files created by assistant tools (create_file, artifacts) extracted to created/
• YAML frontmatter for Obsidian / Dataview queries

Usage

# Most common: point at your export folder
npx claude-chat-archive ./claude-export ./output

# Or under Bun
bunx claude-chat-archive ./claude-export ./output

# Single argument creates ./claude-export/output
npx claude-chat-archive ./claude-export

Options

Flag	Default	Description
--mode <m>	standard	minimal (text only) / standard (+ thinking + tool summaries) / full (everything)
--no-thinking	off	Omit assistant thinking content
--no-tools	off	Omit tool_use / tool_result content
--attachment-threshold <bytes>	4096	Inline attachments smaller than this; otherwise external
--scope <s>	all	all / chats / projects
--dry-run	off	Print stats without writing
-h, --help	—	Show help
-v, --version	—	Show version

Output structure

output/
├── chats/
│   └── 2026-01-29 PDF 버퍼를 이미지로 변환.md
├── projects/
│   ├── 프로그래밍 강의.md            # no docs → single file
│   └── How to use Claude/             # has docs → folder
│       ├── README.md
│       └── docs/Claude prompting guide.md
├── attachments/
│   └── <chat-uuid>/<filename>     # files YOU sent in
└── created/
    └── <chat-uuid>/<filename>     # files Claude created via tools

Each chat markdown has frontmatter for searchable metadata:

---
uuid: 5a2e2c19-7df0-4a92-ad55-c52a5189bcbe
title: PDF 버퍼를 이미지로 변환
created: 2026-01-29T12:06:57Z
updated: 2026-01-29T12:07:25Z
message_count: 4
attachment_count: 1
tags: [claude-chat]
summary: |
  Conversation summary preserved from the export…
---

Programmatic API

import { archive } from "claude-chat-archive";

const stats = await archive({
  inputDir: "./claude-export",
  outputDir: "./out",
  mode: "standard",
  includeThinking: true,
  includeTools: true,
  attachmentThreshold: 4096,
  scope: "all",
  dryRun: false,
});

console.log(stats);
// { chatsTotal: 177, chatsWritten: 177, projectsWritten: 15, ... }

Requirements

• Node ≥ 20 or Bun
• Zero runtime dependencies

License

MIT