session-archive: back up Claude Code session logs before the 30-day auto-delete

Claude Code deletes your old session logs after 30 days by default (~/.claude/projects/*.jsonl). I built session-archive (PyPI) so the full transcript is backed up before that window closes.

pip install session-archive, then:

session-archive archive --dry-run   # preview what would be archived
session-archive archive             # archive expired sessions

What it does:

• Finds every session older than the retention window (default 30 days, configurable).
• Gzips each one into <archive>/YYYY-MM/<session-id>.jsonl.gz, byte-for-byte verified before the original is deleted (--no-delete-source keeps originals).
• Builds a searchable JSON index: session id, original path, message counts, first/last timestamps, a text preview, and a sha256 per archive.
• session-archive search "login flow" searches id / project / path / preview; session-archive restore <id> verifies the checksum and writes the original .jsonl back.

Stdlib-only, no dependencies. Config lives in ~/.config/session-archive/config.json; everything is CLI-flag-overridable. Run it manually or on a cron — the point is to run it before day 30.

Backup is not handover

This is deliberately the opposite of my session-handover tool: handover distills a session into a compact packet for the next agent and throws away detail on purpose. session-archive keeps the transcript verbatim — full-fidelity backup, searchable, restorable. Backup and handover are two different jobs; this one does backup.

11 tests, all green (expiry detection, gzip+index, delete/keep-source, dry-run side-effect-free, search, restore round-trip byte-identical, re-archive idempotency, CLI end-to-end).