Search Sessions - PraisonAI

Search every stored session transcript from the terminal — ranked by relevance, with a snippet centred on each match.

Quick Start

An agent recalls past sessions through the session_search tool — the CLI reaches the same engine from your terminal.

from praisonaiagents import Agent

agent = Agent(
    name="recall-agent",
    instructions="Search past sessions when the user asks about earlier decisions.",
    tools=["session_search"],
)
agent.start("What did we decide about the billing migration?")

Search your sessions

praisonai session search "billing migration"

Prints a table of matching sessions ranked by score, each with a snippet centred on the match:

              Search: billing migration
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ ID                   ┃ Title           ┃ Score ┃ Snippet                                        ┃ When              ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ zeta                 │ Zeta            │ 5.0   │ we need a billing migration migration migr…   │ 2026-06-10T14:32… │
│ alpha                │ Alpha           │ 2.0   │ one mention of migration here                  │ 2026-06-09T11:04… │
└──────────────────────┴─────────────────┴───────┴────────────────────────────────────────────────┴───────────────────┘

An empty result prints:

No sessions matched: billing migration

Widen the search

Return more sessions and more context around each hit:

praisonai session search "billing migration" --limit 10 --window 8

Get machine-readable output

Add the global --json flag for a structured result:

praisonai --json session search "billing migration"

{
  "query": "billing migration",
  "results": [
    {
      "session_id": "zeta",
      "title": "Zeta",
      "when": "2026-06-10T14:32:00Z",
      "snippet": "we need a billing migration migration migr…",
      "score": 5.0,
      "anchor_index": 12,
      "messages": [
        {"index": 11, "role": "user", "content": "...", "timestamp": "...", "archived": true},
        {"index": 12, "role": "assistant", "content": "...", "timestamp": "...", "archived": false}
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Each result is SessionHit.as_dict() — the same shape as the Cross-Session Recall Discovery return.Each message carries an archived boolean — true marks a turn recalled from archived_messages (compacted out of the active window by the default retention="compact" policy). See Recall Across Compacted History.

How It Works

session search delegates to SqliteSessionStore — the same FTS5/bm25 engine as the session_search agent tool — instead of a substring scan. The command iterates the CLI’s canonical stores via canonical_cli_stores() — the same helper session resume / show / delete / export use — so id resolution stays consistent across every sub-command. See Session Resume.

Step	What happens
Enumerate stores	Walks the project-scoped store then the global default store via `canonical_cli_stores()`
Index per store	Opens a `SqliteSessionStore(session_dir=…)` and runs `search(query, limit, window)`
Rank	FTS5/bm25 scoring with snippets and lineage dedup, applied inside each store
Cross-store dedup	Collapses duplicate `session_id`s across stores, keeping the higher-scoring copy
Sort & truncate	Sorts by `(score desc, when desc)` and keeps the top `--limit` hits

Cross-store dedup

A session resumed from the global default store keeps a project-side shadow, so the same id can match in both canonical stores. Without dedup those duplicate rows each consume a slot of --limit and crowd out distinct sessions. The command collapses by session_id, keeping the higher-scoring copy — mirroring the lineage dedup the store already applies inside a single directory.

Search never breaks: if a store can’t be indexed, that store is skipped and the remaining hits are still returned. One bad transcript on disk (unreadable, malformed JSON, or invalid UTF-8) is also skipped — so you don’t need to clean up ~/.praisonai/sessions/ before running the command. See Cross-Session Recall → Resilience to Corrupt Transcripts.

Compacted history stays searchable

The CLI walks the same archived + active projection as the session_search agent tool. A detail rolled into archived_messages under retention="compact" is still recallable via praisonai session search — hits on archived turns come back with archived: true in each message entry (JSON mode) so the compaction boundary stays visible.

# The detail was rolled into archived_messages weeks ago — still findable from the terminal:
praisonai session search "deploy token XZ99" --limit 5

See Cross-Session Recall → Recall Across Compacted History.

Flags

praisonai session search <query> [--limit/-n N] [--window/-w N]

Argument / Flag	Type	Default	Description
`query`	`str` (positional, required)	—	Free-text query to search across session transcripts
`--limit`, `-n`	`int`	`5`	Maximum number of matching sessions to return
`--window`, `-w`	`int`	`5`	Number of messages to include around each hit
`--json` (global)	flag	off	Print `{"query": ..., "results": [...]}` instead of a table

Text mode prints a table with columns ID | Title | Score | Snippet | When. JSON mode prints {"query": "...", "results": [...]} where each result is SessionHit.as_dict().

Common Patterns

From an agent tool to the terminal

The session_search agent tool and praisonai session search share the same store — pick whichever fits your workflow.

# Same engine (SqliteSessionStore / FTS5+bm25) — from the terminal:
praisonai session search "billing migration" --limit 5 --window 5

Pipe JSON into a script

praisonai --json session search "auth refactor" \
  | jq -r '.results[] | "\(.score)\t\(.session_id)\t\(.snippet)"'

Resume the top hit

SID=$(praisonai --json session search "billing migration" | jq -r '.results[0].session_id')
praisonai session resume "$SID"

Best Practices

Keep --window small for a quick scan

Start with the default --window 5. Widen only when you need more surrounding context after finding the right session — then session resume it.

Treat scores as relative rankings

Scores are FTS5/bm25 ranks, not probabilities. A 5.0 beats a 2.0, but says nothing absolute — read the snippets to confirm the match.

Raise --limit when duplicates are expected

Cross-store dedup collapses same-id shadows, but distinct sessions on the same topic still compete for slots. Raise --limit when a topic spans many sessions.

Use --json to automate

The --json output is SessionHit.as_dict() per result — pipe it into jq to feed ids straight into session resume, show, or export.

Session (CLI)

List, resume, show, delete, export, and share sessions

Session Resume

Continue a session with full state restored

Cross-Session Recall

The same engine as an agent tool (session_search)

Session Store

SqliteSessionStore — FTS5 + bm25 recall index

​Quick Start

​How It Works

​Cross-store dedup

​Compacted history stays searchable

​Flags

​Common Patterns

​From an agent tool to the terminal

​Pipe JSON into a script

​Resume the top hit

​Best Practices

​Related

Session (CLI)

Session Resume

Cross-Session Recall

Session Store

Quick Start

How It Works

Cross-store dedup

Compacted history stays searchable

Flags

Common Patterns

From an agent tool to the terminal

Pipe JSON into a script

Resume the top hit

Best Practices

Related