Save and restore chats

[soundweaverz]

Hi Oli! Amazing work! I've been a Neovim user for a few years, shortly tried Zed, but switched back now. However, one feature I'm missing is the ability to save and restore chats and IIRC there used to be a "save and restore" bullet point in the README. I also found another discussion, in which you mention that it could be possible. Any idea how this is prioritized? If I can help you setting it up, I'd gladly try to help working it out!

[olimorris]

Hey @soundweaverz and thanks for your kind words.

I had them in the plugin up until a few days ago (9c57c35). Unfortunately the way I rewrote the messaging element of the chat buffer broke them. I deemed that it wasn't worthwhile fixing them as the future changes I have will necessitate a rewrite again, in a week or two.

Feel free to look through the commit and if you can think of a good way of saving and restoring chats, let me know. I'm open to a PR to implement them again.

[olimorris]

@soundweaverz I meant to say, that you can have multiple chat buffers open at the same time, and can then navigate between them with } and {. Not sure if that does away with your need to save chats but thought I'd mention it.

[a-priestley]

Are there any updates on this topic? I'll give my +1 to request restoring this functionality -- I personally find it very important

[olimorris]

No plans to add this from my end. As per my comment above, I'm open to a PR.

I presume to save chats now, you're copying the chat buffer and saving it down to a file?

[a-priestley]

Not currently. Right now I'm just leaving my neovim session open until I'm sure I won't need my running chats any longer. I no longer use <C-c> to close the chat and instead use :CodeCompanionToggle to make sure the chats aren't killed.

How did saving and loading work previously? If I save a chat buffer to a file, create a new chat, copy the old one to the buffer and submit a new prompt, will the running model be provided with the context it needs, as if I never closed the chat in the first place?

Edit:

I just realized I can do:

close = {
	modes = {
		n = "<C-c>",
		i = "<C-c>",
	},
	index = 3,
	callback = function()
		require("codecompanion").toggle()
	end,
	description = "Toggle Chat",
},

To override the default close functionality. Very handy!

[olimorris]

And you can also have multiple chat buffers open at the same time and cycle through them with } and {.

Previously the whole of the messages would be exported to a JSON file along with the adapter. If they're not in the Chat.messages table then they won't be sent to the LLM with Chat:submit(). I've included the commit which had the saved_chats functionality. above.

[itsfrank]

Howdy! I implemented a save/retrieve functionality I am pretty happy with you can find it in this gist: https://gist.github.com/itsfrank/942780f88472a14c9cbb3169012a3328

Pretty simple, it adds 2 commands:

• CodeCompanionSave with some args will save the current chat as a file whose name is the concatenation of the args with '-'
  • the incantation above would save it as with-some-args.md
• CodeCompanionLoad will open a telescope picker showing you all saved chats
  • the <c-d> mapping will delete currently selected chat

Works very well for my needs. The one thing it does not do is allow you to resume chatting, but I haven't really had the need for that. In any case I'm pretty sure I could just select the bits that are relevant and use CodeCompanionAdd to start a new chat with the relevant context

[olimorris]

Thanks for sharing! This is great.

In terms of resuming chatting...you could open up a chat buffer and pre-fill the messages table. It's a little more involved but something to consider.

[itsfrank]

That would definitely work, if I find myself needing this functionality a few times I'll update the gist!

[jemorriso]

hey, this is awesome! thanks for sharing, it's super helpful for me