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What is Claude Code Helper?

Claude Code Helper is a desktop viewer for the Claude Code sessions saved on your own machine. It finds them — on Windows and inside WSL — lists them in one searchable place, and renders each conversation as readable, exportable chat.

Claude Code keeps your past sessions in hidden, machine-specific store locations, split across several places: a Windows store, and a separate one inside each WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) distribution you run Claude in. There's no built-in way to browse or re-read any of them. This app is the front door: it surfaces those sessions from every store, tags each with where it came from, joins the title and transcript halves automatically, and shows each conversation as clean chat you can search, copy, and save — without ever touching the originals.

There are four things you do with it: browse your sessions, read a transcript, save or share a transcript, and adjust a few settings.

Browse your sessions

The left pane lists every Claude Code session found on this machine, newest first. Each entry shows the session's title, the project folder it ran in, when you last focused it, and a badge for where it came from. Click an entry to open its transcript on the right.

Sessions and transcripts

A session is one Claude Code conversation. Its transcript is the full record of everything said and done in it. These two things are stored separately on your machine: the session's title and basic details live in one place, and the transcript itself lives in another. The app reads both and matches them up by a shared session id, so the list and the readable conversation come together as one.

You never manage this yourself. It matters for just one reason: a session is listed only when its transcript can actually be found. If Claude Code has removed an old transcript (it clears them out after a while), there is nothing left to read, so that session simply doesn't appear in the list rather than showing as an empty entry.

Where a session comes from — the source badge

Every entry carries a small source badge telling you where that session physically lives:

Windows — the session was run with Claude Code on Windows.
A distribution name (for example Ubuntu) — the session was run inside that WSL Linux environment. Claude Code keeps a completely separate store inside each WSL distribution, and the app reads them all.

The same machine can easily hold both kinds at once, in stores that have nothing to do with each other. The badge tells you which world an entry belongs to at a glance. Only WSL distributions that are currently running are scanned — a stopped one's sessions show up as soon as you start it.

Above the list, one source chip appears per store — Windows first, then each running distribution. Each chip carries a count and toggles that source on or off, so you can focus the list on, say, only your WSL sessions and hide the Windows ones (Show or hide sessions from this source).

Active, Archived, and Lost sessions

Every session falls into one of three categories, each with its own filter chip and a live count above the list:

Active — a normal, current session.
Archived — a session you archived in Claude. It's still fully readable here; the tag just reflects its status.
Lost — a Windows transcript that has no matching Claude Desktop entry. Because the entry is what normally holds the title, a lost session has no stored title, so the app recovers one from the first message in the conversation. Without this, a lost session would have no title to list it under and would be invisible.

The three chips show or hide each category as you hunt for a conversation, and their counts reflect whatever sources are currently shown. An entry that was recovered this way also carries a Lost tag of its own — read it as "the title here was reconstructed, not the original."

The app never changes your sessions

Claude Code Helper only reads your sessions — it never writes to them, renames them, or deletes them. Copying and exporting create new clipboard text and new files; the originals are left exactly as they were.

This matters because these files are live working data for Claude Code itself. A viewer that altered them could corrupt a session. So you can browse and export freely without any risk to Claude.

The one caveat: don't manually edit a session's underlying file (for example, the one you reach with Show transcript file in folder) while Claude is actively using that session — that's editing live data behind Claude's back, which is a different thing from anything this app does.

Filter the list

Start typing in the filter box above the list to narrow it down. The filter matches both the session title and the project path, so you can find a session by what it was about or by which folder it ran in. A clear button appears in the box to wipe it in one click and see everything again. The source and category chips described above then narrow whatever the text filter leaves.

Filter by title or path… — the filter box; narrows the list to entries whose title or project path contains what you type.
Clear filter — clears the filter box.

Refresh the list

The list is read once when the app opens. If you start or continue sessions in Claude Code while the app is already running — or start a WSL distribution that was stopped before — use the refresh control at the top of the list to re-read the stores and bring the new sessions in.

Refresh list — re-reads the session stores so sessions created (or distributions started) since the app opened appear.

Read a transcript

Pick a session and its conversation fills the right pane.

How a transcript is shown

The transcript is laid out like a chat. Your messages sit on the right. Claude's replies fill the width on the left. The tool work Claude did along the way appears as blocks inside its replies. Everything is rendered from Markdown — headings, lists, code, and images all display properly — so a raw machine record reads as the conversation you actually had.

Tool blocks — a call folded with its result

Whenever Claude used a tool, two things happened: it sent a request, and it got a result back. The app folds that pair into a single collapsible block. Click the block to open it — the request shows on top, the result below — and click again to close it.

Tool requests and results are bulky, so these blocks start closed, letting you read the conversation without wading through machine detail. When you want to see exactly what a tool did, open the one you care about. (Very long requests or results are trimmed so a big session stays quick to render.)

Expand or collapse all tool details

The expand-all control in the transcript toolbar flips every tool block in the current transcript open or shut in one click — handy when you want the full picture, or want to fold it all back down to skim. You can still open and close individual blocks by clicking them.

Expand or collapse tool details — flips every tool block in the current transcript open or shut at once.

A whole session, a single answer, or one table can leave the app. Three controls in the transcript toolbar take the whole transcript — copy it to the clipboard, save it as a file, or open the original on disk — and two more sit in the conversation itself, appearing when you hover over the part you want.

What the exported Markdown looks like

Both Copy as Markdown and Export as a Markdown file produce the same thing: a standalone Markdown document of the whole conversation. Each turn gets a heading, and the tool work is written inline. Any images Claude received or produced are embedded directly in the document, so it stays complete on its own — it opens, renders, and searches in any editor or notes app, with no need for this viewer.

A turn comes out shaped like this:

### User

Can you rename the helper function and update its callers?

### Claude

Done — renamed it and updated the two call sites.

### Tool result

(the file edits Claude made, shown inline)

The headings (### User, ### Claude, ### Tool result) are part of the exported document itself, so they read clearly even far away from this app.

Copy as Markdown

Puts the whole transcript on your clipboard as Markdown, ready to paste straight into notes, a chat, or an editor.

Copy as Markdown — copies the whole transcript to the clipboard as Markdown.

Copy one of Claude's answers

Sometimes you only want one reply, not the whole conversation. Hover over any of Claude's answers and a copy button appears just beneath it; clicking it puts that single answer on your clipboard as Markdown, formatted exactly as it would be in a full export. The button confirms with a checkmark for a moment, so you know it took.

This is offered on Claude's answers only — your own messages are already text you wrote, and are covered by the whole-transcript copy above.

Copy this answer as Markdown — copies that one answer to the clipboard as Markdown.

Copy a table

Tables are the part of an answer you most often want somewhere else — a comparison, a list of settings, a set of results. Hover over any table in a transcript and a copy button appears in its top-right corner.

It copies the table in two forms at once, and the app you paste into picks the one it understands:

Paste into a spreadsheet, a word processor, or a document editor and you get a real table — the rows and columns arrive intact, not as a wall of text.
Paste into a plain-text editor and you get tab-separated rows, which most editors and data tools read as columns.

You do nothing to choose between them; both travel together on a single copy.

Copy table — copies the table you are hovering over.

Export as a Markdown file

Opens a save dialog so you choose where the .md file goes and what it's called. Use it to archive a session or hand it to someone else.

Export as Markdown file — saves the transcript to a Markdown file you choose.

Show the source file in its folder

Opens your file manager with the session's original transcript file selected. Use it when you want the file itself — to back it up, inspect it, or point another tool at it. (Reading and copying it is safe; editing it while Claude is using that session is not — see The app never changes your sessions.)

Show transcript file in folder — opens the original transcript file in your file manager, selected.

Settings

Open settings from the button in the top bar. There are two tabs: Display for language and theme, and About for the app version.

Open settings — opens the Settings dialog (language, theme, and app version).

Language

Pick the interface language from the list. Your choice is remembered the next time you open the app.

Language — picks the interface language.

Theme

Choose a light or dark interface. The choice applies immediately and is remembered.

Theme — switches between the Light and Dark interface.

Update notifications

When the app launches, it quietly checks whether a newer version has been released. If one is out, a banner appears across the top with a link to the release notes and a download button. It only ever tells you — it never installs anything by itself.

You have three ways to deal with the banner:

Download — opens the page to get the new version.
Dismiss — hides the banner for this run; it can come back next launch.
Skip this version — hides the banner until an even newer version ships, so you're not reminded again about this one.
What's new — opens the release notes for the new version.

If you're offline, already up to date, or have skipped the advertised version, no banner appears.

Other controls

GitHub — opens the app's source-code repository on GitHub in your browser.
Help — opens this help page in your current language.