Continue

  • ID: continue
  • Store: ${CONTINUE_GLOBAL_DIR:-~/.continue}/sessions/<sessionId>.json, one document per session, with sessions.json beside them as the list.
  • Read override: DEJA_CONTINUE_ROOT
  • Format: whole-file JSON rewritten on change; full re-parse per pass.

Continue runs in VS Code and JetBrains, and its chat, agent and plan modes all

write the same file. The session document holds history[], each item a

message with a role and a content that is either a string or an array of

{type, text} parts; an assistant item that called tools carries them in

toolCallStates[]. system and tool roles are skipped — the first is

configuration, and a tool's result arrives under the assistant item that asked

for it. The tool calls themselves are not indexed as work records: they are

model tools (read_file, edit_file) rather than commands anyone ran, and the

command index is for the latter.

Nothing in the file carries a timestamp. sessions.json records dateCreated

and workspaceDirectory per session, so that date is the session's start and

the file's mtime is its update; turns are laid out in order from the start,

which is enough to order them within the session. The project name comes from

workspaceDirectory, falling back to the list entry when the document omits it.

Shape verified against Continue's own types (core/index.d.ts: Session,

ChatHistoryItem, ChatMessage) and core/util/paths.ts; a live-store

validation is still welcome.

  • MCP: deja install continue adds the server to mcpServers: in

~/.continue/config.yaml — a list of mappings, not the keyed object other

harnesses use, so the entry is found again by its name. Verified on

@continuedev/cli 1.5.47 against a recording endpoint: the deja tool is in

the tool list of every request, and a call came back with the seeded decision

in the bytes Continue sent next. The TUI header lists it under MCP Servers.

  • Skill: the same install writes ~/.continue/skills/deja-history/SKILL.md.

Continue reads skills from its global folder and from <workspace>/.claude/skills,

and names each one in the Skills tool's own description — so it is in front

of the model on every turn, which is what makes recall arrive unasked.

  • Command: prompts: in the same config carries /deja. Continue expands

slash commands in its TUI; in -p headless mode the text goes through

verbatim, so the entry is written but its expansion is unverified here.

  • Auto-recall: none yet. The CLI carries a Claude-shaped hooks system —

Claude's own event set, additionalContext, settings read from

~/.continue/settings.json — and nothing fires it in 1.5.47: hooks written

for every event loaded (its own log says "Hooks loaded: 8 handler(s) across 8

event type(s)") and no handler ran, while the same run's tool call went

through. It becomes work the day a release fires them.

  • Resume: cn --resume reopens the last session and --fork <id> branches

from one, but nothing takes the id of an arbitrary session; the editor

reopens one from its history view.

  • Handoff: paste.

Costs on that version, measured from the recorded requests: deja's tool schema

is 3,112 bytes of the 10 KB tool block in every request, the skill adds 700

bytes to the Skills tool's description, and a recall that answers adds 1,384

bytes to the turn that asked.

Last verified: 2026-09-07

deja reads this format and twenty-four others, and turns what it finds into memory your agents can search. See the harness matrix for what is wired where, or install it and search your own history.