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Viewing a date window

--from-date and --to-date turn a run into a view of that window: its index, combined pages, session pages and recent sessions page, and every link they show, come from the window.

# Yesterday's work across all projects, in a directory of its own
claude-code-log --from-date "yesterday" --to-date "yesterday" -o ~/yesterday

# One project's last week, as one page of its own
claude-code-log /path/to/project --from-date "last week" --combined only -o ~/last-week.html

Both bounds take natural language ("today", "3 days ago", "2026-01-02 15:00"); either may be left out.

What the view shows

  • The index lists only the projects with a session in the window, and each project card counts the window: its messages, its tokens, the time between its first and last message. Each session it lists is shown with its usual title and the window's part of it.
  • A project's combined page holds the window's messages.
  • A session page is written for each session with a message in the window, and only those. A session that only crosses the window, with messages before and after it but none inside, is not part of it.
  • The recent sessions page lists the window's sessions, however old, instead of those active in the last three days. Each row counts the window's part of its session, as the index does: its messages, turns and tool calls, and its last prompt and message. At most 60 are listed, newest first, as on any run.
  • Every page states its window in its title or under its heading, e.g. (from 2026-01-02 to 2026-01-02), so it is never taken for the whole archive.
  • The search page still searches the whole archive, as on any run (it needs claude-code-log serve), and says so next to the window.

Archived projects, whose transcripts are gone, are not part of a view: there is no source left to take a window of.

Where the view goes

A date-filtered run writes into a destination that holds none of the pages it is about to write. Other files in the directory do not count, nor do the vendored assets/ and referenced images, which are the same bytes in any view.

If one of its pages is already there, the run writes nothing and exits with an error naming the first such file. This is what happens when you re-run a date filter in place, over the pages of an earlier run:

Error: /home/me/.claude/projects/index.html already exists. A date-filtered run
writes only into a destination that holds none of the files it writes:
pass --force to overwrite them (nothing is removed), or choose another
--output.

For one project, the session pages are written into the project's directory whatever -o names, so the way out it offers is the combined page alone:

Error: /path/to/project/session-1a2b3c4d.html already exists. A date-filtered
run writes only into a destination that holds none of the files it writes:
pass --force to overwrite them (nothing is removed), or write the combined
page alone elsewhere, with --combined only and --output.

With --combined no there is no combined page to send elsewhere, so the error offers --force alone.

You then have two ways out:

  • -o / --output another directory. This is the usual way: the full view stays where it is, and the window's view goes next to it. For one project, -o names the combined page alone, and its session pages are still written into the project's directory, where the full view's are. To leave those alone, write the combined page only (--combined only -o page.html), or the whole view in place with --force.

  • --force writes the window's view over the existing pages. It removes nothing: pages of the full view that the window does not rewrite (session pages outside the window, other projects' pages) stay where they are, no longer linked from the new index. --force is only accepted together with a date window. To clear the others out, mark the time before the run and delete the pages it did not rewrite (check the list without -delete first):

    touch /tmp/before-view
claude-code-log --from-date "yesterday" --force
find ~/.claude/projects -name '*.html' ! -newer /tmp/before-view -delete

The render cache

The cache records which pages are current, by project and file name. A view written in place, with --force, marks the pages it replaced, so the next run without a date filter rewrites them in full. A view written anywhere else leaves those records alone: the full view's pages, which it did not touch, stay current.

The transcripts themselves are cached as usual. A date-filtered run refreshes the cache exactly as a run without a filter would, so the next plain run finds it up to date.

Note

Sessions from other providers (--provider codex) are not covered yet: their date-filtered run still writes over the full view, and takes no --force.