Search inside your Claude Code and Codex conversations

The problem

Agent chats get titles from their first message, so the one where you finally fixed the OAuth redirect might be called "look at the login bug". A week later, what you remember is a detail from the middle of the conversation: an error message, a file name, a flag the agent suggested. Title search doesn't find that, and the answer might be in either app.

How Pairbar solves it

1. Put the cursor in search
   Click the field at the top of the Chats tab, or press ⌘K while Claude or Codex is in front.
2. Type what you remember
   For example redirect_uri mismatch or payments retry. Case, accents and extra spaces don't matter; with several words, each has to match somewhere.
3. Read the ranked results
   The list becomes one ranked result list in three parts (below). Conversation matches show the matching line under the chat, with your words in bold.
4. Open it or run an action
   ↑ ↓ move through the results, ↩ opens the chat (the first result if nothing is highlighted), Esc clears the search and returns you to the app.

Shortcuts

How results are ranked

1. Titles: a chat named exactly what you typed, then titles that start with it, then a word in the title, then anywhere in the title.
2. Projects and branches: chats whose project or branch matches.
3. In conversations: chats that match only inside what was said.

Within each part, newest first. Pinned and needs-you chats rank like the rest while you search.

What's searched, and the text cache

Search covers your messages and the agents' replies, not tool output. The first search over all chats needs a small text cache, which Pairbar builds quietly about 20 seconds after launch, so searches are usually instant. The cache lives in ~/Library/Caches/<bundle id>/text, readable only by you, is pruned as chats disappear, and can be deleted with Settings → Chats & sidebar → Clear search cache.

Actions as you type

Typing in search also shows matching Actions above the chats, with words in any order: New chat, New agent, New workflow; Agents, Workflows, Settings, Show welcome; Mark all as read; Start ; Run ""; Group by …, Show label "…", Clear label filter. When a chat's title is (or starts with) what you typed, actions move just below it, so ↩ still opens that chat.

Cloud chats are found by their titles, but not by conversation text: their transcripts aren't on your Mac.

Without Pairbar

Without Pairbar, conversation text is searchable with standard tools, since both CLIs keep transcripts as files:

# Claude Code transcripts (JSON Lines, one folder per project)
grep -rl "redirect_uri" ~/.claude/projects

# Codex session files
grep -rl "redirect_uri" ~/.codex/sessions

That finds the file, but you then have to work out which chat it is and open it in the right app. The desktop apps' own sidebars search their own chats, one app at a time.