How to Search Cursor Chat History Across Workspaces

You remember fixing the authentication bug. You cannot remember which project contained the conversation.

cursor-history searches conversation text in supported local Cursor stores across discovered workspaces. It can read history created before you installed it, without a capture hook, embeddings, or an API key.

Start with a phrase you remember

npm install -g cursor-history
cursor-history list --all
cursor-history search "connection pool"

Run this on the machine where the history is stored, using Node.js 20.x or 22.x–26.x. The CLI searches parsed message content using case-insensitive text matching. It does not semantically infer that “database saturation” means “connection pool.”

Try a distinctive substring if a broad query returns too much:

cursor-history search "ECONNRESET" -n 30
cursor-history search "oauth callback"
cursor-history search "refreshToken"

Search returns up to 10 matching sessions by default. -n 30 raises the limit; -n 0 returns all matching sessions. list --all removes the listing limit; it is not a switch that enables global search. Search covers discovered workspaces by default unless you select a workspace.

Open the session that actually matched

For interactive use, copy the session index displayed in the result. If it is 12:

cursor-history show 12
cursor-history export 12

The number refers to the underlying session list within the same data roots and workspace scope. It is not the search result’s ordinal position. New sessions can also change list indices, so use exact UUIDs for saved commands.

With jq installed, retrieve those UUIDs directly:

cursor-history search "authentication" --json   | jq -r '.results[].sessionId'

Copy a returned ID into these commands, replacing the placeholder:

session_id='PASTE_RETURNED_SESSION_UUID'
cursor-history show "$session_id"
cursor-history export "$session_id" --format json --output ./conversation.json

The JSON export contains the available session representation. It may include source details and inferred timestamps; it is not proof of a complete original conversation.

Narrow the workspace when you know it

Keep the same scope on the follow-up read:

cursor-history --workspace /absolute/path/to/project search "authentication"
cursor-history --workspace /absolute/path/to/project show 1

Here 1 means session 1 in that workspace’s list. Do not reuse a global index in a workspace-scoped read. A workspace filter also limits which conversation sources may be opened; it is more than a display filter.

If you get no useful matches

Check	Why it matters
Try a shorter phrase or exact error token	Text search does not paraphrase the query
Run cursor-history list --all --json	Inspect discovered sessions and any diagnostics
Check which machine and user account owns the files	Local search does not fetch SSH, cloud, or another user’s history
Check custom roots or WSL paths	Composer data and ~/.cursor can live in different environments
Review source status	Missing, partial, or ambiguous sources can affect what is searchable

For an explicit environment, set both roots to the intended directories:

CURSOR_DATA_PATH='/absolute/path/to/Cursor/User/workspaceStorage' CURSOR_STORE_ROOT='/absolute/path/to/.cursor' cursor-history search "authentication"

The platform guide explains these selectors. An empty result means no match was returned from the readable selected sources; it does not prove that a chat was deleted.

When to use Cursor’s own commands

To continue an Agent CLI conversation, start with Cursor’s native session commands. This workflow is useful when you need to locate text across local conversations and then inspect or export the result.

The MCP companion can let an assistant perform the search. As checked on September 8, 2026, MCP 0.3.1 uses reader 0.18.0. The packages release independently, so update the MCP package when upgrading the server.

If the search finds something useful, keep cursor-history on GitHub. For moved projects, continue with the recovery guide.

Implementation references: search traversal, text matcher, CLI JSON formatter.