Fixing Claude Code Export Conversations

Reconstruct broken line wrapping in Claude Code exported

.txt

files.

Quick Start

# Fix and show stats
uv run <skill-path>/scripts/fix-claude-export.py <export.txt> --stats

# Custom output
uv run <skill-path>/scripts/fix-claude-export.py <export.txt> -o fixed.txt

# Validate the result (53 automated checks)
uv run <skill-path>/scripts/validate-claude-export-fix.py <export.txt> fixed.txt

Replace

<skill-path>

with the resolved path to this skill's directory. Find it with:

find ~/.claude -path "*/fixing-claude-export-conversations/scripts" -type d 2>/dev/null

Workflow

Copy this checklist and track progress:

- [ ] Step 1: Locate the exported .txt file
- [ ] Step 2: Run fix script with --stats
- [ ] Step 3: Run validation suite
- [ ] Step 4: Spot-check output (tables, CJK paragraphs, tool results)
- [ ] Step 5: Deliver fixed file to user

Step 1: Locate the file. Claude Code exports use the naming pattern

YYYY-MM-DD-HHMMSS-<slug>.txt

.

Step 2: Run the fix script.

uv run <skill-path>/scripts/fix-claude-export.py <input.txt> -o <output.txt> --stats

Review the stats output — typical results: 20-25% line reduction, 80+ table borders fixed, 160+ table cells fixed.

Step 3: Run the validation suite.

uv run <skill-path>/scripts/validate-claude-export-fix.py <input.txt> <output.txt>

All checks must pass. If any fail, investigate before delivering. Use

--verbose

for full details on passing checks too.

Step 4: Spot-check. Open the output and verify:

• Tables have intact borders (box-drawing characters on single lines)
• CJK/English mixed text has pangu spacing (

  Portal 都需要

  , not

  Portal都需要

  )
• Tool result blocks (

  ⎿

  ) have complete content on joined lines
• Diff output within tool results has each line number on its own line

Step 5: Deliver the fixed file to the user.

What Gets Fixed

The script handles 10 content types using a state-machine with next-line look-ahead:

• User prompts (

  ❯

  prefix, dw=76 padding) — paragraph joins with pangu spacing
• Claude responses (

  ●

  prefix) — narrative, bullet, and numbered list joins
• Claude paragraphs (2-space indent) — next-line look-ahead via

  _is_continuation_fragment

• Tables — border reconstruction, cell re-padding with pipe-count tracking
• Tool calls (

  ● Bash(

  etc.) — path and argument reconstruction
• Tool results (

  ⎿

  prefix) — continuation joins including deeper-indented fragments
• Plan text (5-space indent) — next-line look-ahead via

  _is_plan_continuation_fragment

• Agent tree (

  ├─

  /

  └─

  ) — preserved structure
• Separators (

  ────

  ,

  ---

  ) — never joined
• Tree connectors (standalone

  │

  ) — preserved

Key Design Decisions

Next-line look-ahead (not dw thresholds): Instead of asking "was this line wrapped?" (fragile threshold), the script asks "does the next line look like a continuation?" by examining its content patterns — lowercase start, CJK ideograph start, opening bracket, hyphen/slash/underscore continuation.

Pangu spacing: Inserts spaces between ASCII alphanumeric characters and CJK ideographs at join boundaries. Also triggers for

%

,

#

,

+

,

:

adjacent to CJK.

Mid-token detection: Joins without space when boundaries indicate identifiers (

BASE_

+

URL

), paths (

documents

+

/05-team

), or hyphenated names (

ready

+

-together

). Exception:

--

prefix gets a space (

run

+

--headed

).

Safety

• Never modifies the original file
• Marker counts verified:

  ❯

  ,

  ●

  ,

  ✻

  ,

  ⎿

  ,

  …

  must match input/output
• Runaway join detection: warns if any line exceeds 500 display-width
• Strict UTF-8 encoding — no silent fallbacks

Dependencies

Python 3.10+ via

uv run

— zero external packages (stdlib only:

unicodedata

,

argparse

,

re

,

pathlib

,

dataclasses

).