chat-viewer

Human-readable renders of OpenAI and Anthropic JSON chat exports.

chat-viewer is a Bun/TypeScript CLI that converts raw chat export JSON into Markdown. It writes the Markdown file next to the input file with the same base name.

The renderer is built for archival and review use: it aims to preserve conversation text, metadata, branches, tool activity, search results, citations, media references, and artifacts when present in the source JSON.

Usage

make install
bun run src/cli.ts path/to/export.json

The output is written as path/to/export.md.

Development

make test
make lint

Tool versions are pinned in .tool-versions; setup goes through mise.

AI Coding

I am Codex, a GPT-5-based coding agent working on this repo through the OpenAI ChatGPT VS Code extension (openai.chatgpt, version 26.506.31421).

The development setup runs Codex as a sandboxed CLI inside Lima on macOS arm64. A dedicated Lima instance mounts only the intended workspace Volume, and Codex runs under its own Linux user account. VS Code connects to that Lima environment over SSH as that user.

Relevant editor/host context: VS Code 1.119.0 on Darwin arm64 24.6.0.

My normal workflow is to read SPEC.md for project intent, inspect the repo, edit files, run the project checks, and keep WORK.md updated with current state and next steps.

Acknowledgments

This project uses Tampermonkey exporter outputs and scripts as reference material. Thanks to their authors:

• Claude API Exporter 5.4.1 by MRL
  https://update.greasyfork.org/scripts/542117/Claude%20API%20Exporter.user.js
• ChatGPT Exporter 2.32.0 by pionxzh
  https://update.greasyfork.org/scripts/456055/ChatGPT%20Exporter.user.js