History Search Now Finds Files, Tool Results, And Other Conversations

August 19, 2026

"Find the deck from last month" used to fail in a brand-new chat, because search defaulted to this empty thread and came back as a silent miss. History Searcher now mixes conversation, uploads, generated files, and past tool results — and when this session has nothing, it shows a handful of hits from your other conversations, clearly labelled as coming from elsewhere.

What you can do

• Search mixed history, not just files. A default search returns conversation turns, generated files, uploads, and past tool results together, with per-source quotas so a session full of images cannot crowd out the chat that explains them.
• Find a file by a fuzzy name across every session. find_files is the filename lookup; list_files lists one session. Use those when you have a name (or * for recent files), not a semantic question.
• Read generated images and old tool output. Image Lab stills and tool-message payloads are indexed, so "the chart from the Q3 run" and "what did Google News return last Tuesday" are real queries.
• Recover from an empty new chat. If nothing matches in the current session, the card shows the top 5 matches from other conversations with an amber notice — each result names its session. Re-run with search_scope='all' for the full set, or find_files for a filename sweep.
• Page a transcript without dragging tool calls along. full_conversation with * (most recent), "12-40" (that range), or "all" (from the start).
• Search inside one large file. search_in_file plus a filename is the way to read a truncated overflow artifact without dumping the whole thing into context.

Where this shows up

You started a fresh chat to continue last month's investor deck. History Search used to say nothing was found. It now surfaces the deck from the other session and tells you it came from there.

You asked "when did we decide on the pricing page headline?" A mixed search returns the decision turn and the generated copy file, instead of ten image chunks and no conversation.

You typed * expecting a file list and got "no history found." That query now errors with a pointer: use list_files / find_files, or pass real words for a semantic search.

Try it

• "search my history for the investor deck draft from last month"
• "find files named anything like q3-board across all sessions"
• "when did we last discuss the EU residency constraint?"
• "open the overflow markdown from yesterday's browser run and search inside it for pricing"
• "show me the most recent messages in this conversation, without the tool traces"

Heads up

• Fallback hits are a lead, not the full archive. Five results from other sessions, each labelled. Ask for search_scope='all' or find_files when you want the complete set.
• * is not a search term. It lists or pages. A semantic search needs words.
• Still your history only. Other users' conversations are never in the index.