Stores & config

Two fundamentally different store shapes — JSONL files on disk, and SQLite databases — unified behind one session list. Here is every one of them, and what to do when yours lives somewhere else.

crossmem config prints this for your machine, including which candidates actually exist. Start there before believing any table.

What it reads

Claude encodes the working directory into a project directory name; every VS Code fork records it in workspaceStorage/<id>/workspace.json; the SQLite stores keep it in a column. Either way, a session is matched to a folder by the real cwd it recorded, so a folder whose name contains a dash still resolves correctly.

Devin's ~/.local/share/devin/credentials.toml sits right beside the session database and is deliberately never read. Nor is any sibling auth.json, auth.db or credential table.

Per-platform locations

Claude Code, Codex and the Copilot CLI use the same ~-relative path on every platform. %LOCALAPPDATA% and $XDG_DATA_HOME are checked too.

Environment variables that win

A candidate path whose variable is unset on the current machine simply drops out — which is how a Windows-only location disappears on macOS without a single runtime.GOOS branch. ADR 1.

Pointing it somewhere else

crossmem already knows the standard locations. The config file is for what it cannot know: a portable install, a second drive, a custom data directory.

~/.config/crossmemcli/config.json — or wherever $CROSSMEM_CONFIG says. crossmem config --init writes a starter.

{
  "defaults": { "mode": "full", "limit": 5 },
  "stores": {
    "devin:sqlite-sessions": "D:/agents/devin/cli/sessions.db",
    "claude": ["~/work/.claude/projects"]
  },
  "extraStores": {
    "opencode": "~/other/opencode/opencode*.db"
  },
  "dumpDir": "~/.assets/convdump",
  "sync": { "remote": "hetzbox:companydata/convdump" }
}

• defaults sets what happens with no flag. A command-line flag always wins, so "mode": "full" means you never type --full again.
• stores replaces a store's built-in locations; extraStores keeps them and adds more.
• Keys are provider:kind as printed by crossmem scan, or a bare provider for that provider's primary store — so overriding devin cannot accidentally repoint devin:cli-logs at a database file.
• Values are a path or a list of them. ~, %VAR%, $VAR and * globs expand, and a path whose variable is unset is skipped — so one config file can be shared across machines.
• An unknown key is a load error, surfaced by crossmem config rather than silently ignored.

“It can't find my sessions”

1. crossmem scan — is the store discovered at all?
2. crossmem config — which candidate paths were checked, and which exist?
3. Relocated install? Set the env var above, or add a stores override.
4. Sessions exist but not for this folder? The match is on the recorded cwd — try crossmem list --provider <tool> --limit 20 with no folder and read the workspace column.
5. Still nothing? CROSSMEM_DEBUG=1 crossmem scan reports the local read and query failures (never transcript contents).

What is never read

• *.env, credential files, auth databases, credential tables, and vault/ directories.
• The same filter runs over export and the sync dump, so a dump pushed to a remote cannot carry a secret value. Cache and node_modules directories are dropped too.
• Nothing is sent anywhere. crossmem has no network path except the rclone remote you name yourself in sync.