Copilot Chat Saver

A dead-simple VS Code extension that automatically saves all your GitHub Copilot chat sessions — including Claude thinking/reasoning blocks — as Markdown files in your workspace.

Why?

• 100% local — no telemetry, no network, no cloud. Your chats stay on your machine.
• Zero dependencies — uses only Node.js stdlib (fs, path, crypto).
• Handles both formats — VS Code stores chats as .json (older) and .jsonl (newer incremental format). Both are parsed correctly.
• Includes thinking — Claude Opus/Sonnet 4.x thinking blocks are extracted and rendered as collapsible <details> sections.
• De-duplicated — content-hashed so unchanged sessions aren't rewritten.
• Auto-saves — polls every 30 seconds (configurable) for new/updated chats.

Install

From source (recommended for trust)

cd copilot-chat-saver
npm install
npm run compile
npm run package       # creates copilot-chat-saver-1.0.0.vsix
code --install-extension copilot-chat-saver-1.0.0.vsix

Development / debugging

Open this folder in VS Code and press F5 to launch the extension in a development host.

Usage

The extension activates automatically when VS Code starts. It:

1. Finds the chatSessions/ directory in your workspace storage
2. Parses every .json and .jsonl chat session file
3. Converts them to clean Markdown
4. Saves into .chat-history/ in your workspace root

Commands

Command	Description
Copilot Chat Saver: Save All Chats Now	Manually trigger a save
Copilot Chat Saver: Toggle Auto-Save	Enable/disable auto-save
Copilot Chat Saver: Open History Folder	Reveal the history folder in Finder

Settings

Setting	Default	Description
copilotChatSaver.autoSave	true	Auto-save on a timer
copilotChatSaver.outputDirectory	.chat-history	Output folder (relative to workspace)
copilotChatSaver.pollIntervalSeconds	30	Poll interval in seconds
copilotChatSaver.includeThinking	true	Include Claude thinking blocks
copilotChatSaver.includeToolCalls	true	Include tool call details

Output format

Each chat session becomes a single Markdown file like:

.chat-history/
├── 2026-03-01_fix-entity-editor-crash_a1b2c3d4.md
├── 2026-03-02_refactor-settings-tab_e5f6g7h8.md
└── 2026-03-03_deploy-troubleshooting_i9j0k1l2.md

Each file contains:

• Session metadata (date, model, user, session ID)
• Every user message
• Every assistant response with full text
• Claude thinking blocks in collapsible <details> sections
• Tool call summaries (file reads, searches, edits)

Where does VS Code store chats?

~/Library/Application Support/Code/User/workspaceStorage/<hash>/chatSessions/

Each workspace has a unique hash. The extension finds the right one automatically.

Privacy

This extension:

• Never makes network requests
• Never collects telemetry
• Never sends your data anywhere
• Reads only from VS Code's local workspace storage
• Writes only to your workspace folder
• Has zero runtime dependencies

You can audit the entire source in a single file: src/extension.ts

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Sponsored by

Shiny Gen AI

Built with support from Shiny Gen AI — AI-powered tools for modern developers.