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@daveaseeman
Created February 23, 2026 20:28
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Drop this export prompt into any cowork session to losslessly export your data for transportability

Universal Cowork Session Export Prompt

Paste this into any Cowork session to export its full context before closing it.


The Prompt

Please export this session's context for reuse in a future session. Create the following structure:

export/
├── session-context.md
├── session-transcript.jsonl
└── session-artifacts/
    └── (all deliverable files)

### 1. SESSION-CONTEXT.md

Write a comprehensive context document covering:

- What this project/task is about
- All key decisions made (with rationale where important)
- All design constraints, rules, and config shapes established
- Current status of all workstreams
- Any pending/unresolved items
- The complete list of files in session-artifacts/ and their purposes
- My stated preferences for how you should work with me
- Any important context a new session would need to continue this work

At the top of the file, include this notice:

> ## How to Use This Export
>
> This folder contains the full context from a previous Cowork session.
>
> **Start here:** Read this SESSION-CONTEXT.md file for all key decisions and current status.
>
> **session-transcript.jsonl** is the raw conversation transcript (~tens of MB). Do NOT load this file into context. Instead, use `grep` to search it when you need additional detail that isn't captured in this summary. For example:
> - `grep -i "<keyword>" session-transcript.jsonl` to find discussion of a specific topic
> - `grep -i "decided\|agreed\|approved" session-transcript.jsonl` to find decision points
>
> **session-artifacts/** contains all deliverable documents produced during the session.

### 2. session-transcript.jsonl

Copy the session's JSONL transcript file to export/session-transcript.jsonl. The transcript lives at a path like:

  /sessions/<session-id>/mnt/.claude/projects/-sessions-<session-id>/<uuid>.jsonl

Find it with:
  find /sessions -path "*/.claude/projects/*" -name "*.jsonl" -not -path "*/subagents/*" 2>/dev/null

Copy it directly — do NOT read its contents.

### 3. session-artifacts/

Copy all deliverable documents (the files I'd actually use — not intermediate scratch files) into this subfolder. Include both source formats (.md, .docx) and their PDF versions where they exist.

### When done

List the complete contents of the export/ folder.

In Your New Session

Point the new session at the folder containing the export, then say:

Read export/SESSION-CONTEXT.md — this is context from a previous session. Use it to understand the project before we start. The session-transcript.jsonl in that folder is a raw conversation log — don't load it, but grep it if you need detail beyond what the context doc covers.
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