Project - Chat Notebook

Local-first notebook for importing ChatGPT export zips into a canonical SQLite archive with searchable conversations, artifact inspection, and an Astro browser.

Status
released
Year
2026
Type
Internal system

Overview

Chat Notebook turns hosted AI conversation exports into an owned local archive. It imports OpenAI export zips into SQLite, preserves raw source JSON, extracts readable message text, and materializes best-effort attachment blobs for local inspection.

The project exists because long-running AI work becomes project memory: research trails, debugging sessions, drafts, decisions, and lessons learned. A zip file is useful as a backup, but it is not enough as a retrieval system.

The released line ships as a Go CLI with deterministic import behavior plus an Astro viewer for browsing and searching the notebook locally.

What ships

  • Imports OpenAI conversation export zips into SQLite
  • Deterministic, idempotent repeat imports with stable dedupe
  • Search and stats commands for terminal workflows
  • Local browser viewer with artifact and blob inspection
  • MIT-licensed public repo with CI and install instructions

Install

Go installshell
$ go install github.com/justyn-clark/chat-notebook/cmd/chat-notebook@latest

Focus areas

  • local-first
  • memory
  • go
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