Use the Agents window to build in an agent-first way.

Query session history with chronicle

Your GitHub Copilot sessions build a searchable history of everything you work on. Ask natural language questions about past sessions, generate standup reports, get personalized tips, and search your coding history. With session sync active by default, queries draw from sessions across Copilot CLI, coding agent, code review, and VS Code.

Chronicle commands

Use these commands in the chat input to query your session history:

Command Description
/chronicle:standup Summarize recent coding sessions into a standup report, grouped by branch and repository. Covers the last 24 hours by default. Includes files edited, PRs or issues referenced, and whether work is done or in progress.
/chronicle:tips Analyze your recent session history (typically 7 days) and suggest ways to use Copilot more effectively. Tips are grounded in your actual usage patterns: tools you rarely use, prompting patterns that lead to better results, or workflow improvements.
/chronicle:cost-tips Analyze recent sessions to identify opportunities to reduce token usage and Copilot cost.
/chronicle:search <query> Search sessions by keyword, file path, or PR or issue reference. Uses full-text indexing across session summaries, conversation turns, file paths, and checkpoint notes. Results include session IDs and timestamps so you can resume relevant sessions.
/chronicle:reindex Rebuild the local session index and sync session data to your account.

Free-form questions

You can also ask free-form questions about your session history directly in chat. For example, type "What files did I edit yesterday?" or "Have I worked on anything related to the payments API?" and Copilot searches your synced session history to answer. Unlike /chronicle:search which performs a direct content search, free-form questions use semantic understanding to find relevant sessions.

What gets tracked

For each chat session, the local session store records:

  • Session metadata: repository, branch, working directory, timestamps, and the agent or participant used.
  • Conversation turns: user messages (up to 1,000 characters) and assistant responses (up to 5,000 characters).
  • Files touched: file paths from tool calls such as replace_string_in_file, create_file, read_file, and apply_patch.
  • External references: PR numbers, issue numbers, and commit SHAs extracted from GitHub MCP tool calls and terminal commands.

Data is stored in a local SQLite database. Secrets such as tokens, API keys, passwords, and connection strings are automatically filtered before data is synced to the cloud.

Reindex the session store

If sessions appear missing or the database becomes corrupted, rebuild the index. Reindexing also syncs your session data to your account.

/chronicle:reindex

You can also run the Reindex Sessions command (github.copilot.chronicle.reindex) from the Command Palette.

Situations where reindexing helps:

  • After restoring session files from a backup
  • After an unexpected crash that prevented data from flushing to the store
  • After manually deleting session directories
  • After opting back into session sync

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