Finding an old session by meaning

What it is

This area is about looking backwards — finding a session you only half-remember by describing its gist. Two independent pieces carry it.

The first is Semantic Search, a local embedding model that lets the Ctrl+K palette return sessions by meaning. A query like "why is the deploy slow" can surface a session titled "Fixing CI pipeline latency" even though none of the words match. It is a background ranking aid, not a separate screen: the matching results blend silently into the normal Ctrl+K list, with no toggle, no badge and no "AI match" label to explain them. The model runs entirely on your machine and the feature ships on by default.

The second is Session Search, a chat with Claude that lives in the sidebar as its own project. Instead of typing keywords you describe the session in plain English — "that Stripe refund thing from last week" — and Claude runs the searches, checks a few candidates by reading them, and replies with clickable links straight into what it found.

The two are complementary. Ctrl+K is instant and keyword-shaped; Session Search is conversational and can reason across several candidates before it answers. Both rest on the same local index of session titles and first messages, and neither sends your sessions anywhere.

Where to find it

• Ctrl+K (⌘K on Mac) — the search palette. Meaning-based ranking happens automatically inside it when a query meets its eligibility rules; there is nothing to switch on per search.
• Session Search in the sidebar — a project entry seeded on first launch, sitting alongside your real projects. Click it and you land in a focused chat with the composer ready.
• Quick Launch (Ctrl+Space) — its tab strip carries a Search tab, which ships unpinned and can be added from the strip's "+" button or from Settings → Quick Launch.
• Settings → Sessions → AI-Powered Search — the single master toggle for the embedding model, with a small readout of the index's state.

How it behaves

Everything below is documented in full on the page named; this hub only maps the area.

• Semantic Search is the main page. It covers the local model and its one-time download, how sessions get indexed and backfilled, the silent blend into Ctrl+K and the rules a query must meet to trigger it, and the automatic circuit breaker that turns the feature off if the engine crashes repeatedly.
• Global Search is the Ctrl+K palette that meaning-based results blend into. Its page covers the query syntax, the channels it searches and its surface tabs; its Ask AI escalation hands a query off to a Session Search chat running in the background.
• Session Search is the sidebar project — the AI Session Search agent. It describes how Claude queries the local search endpoints and the escalation ladder it climbs (semantic → full text → a timeframe list → reading the transcript) to track a session down.
• Quick Launch Modal is the floating global-hotkey composer, including the Search tab that reaches the same search without opening the main window.
• Deep Links covers the omniscio://session/<id> links the clickable search results use to jump straight into a session.
• MemPalace is a separate, differently-built cross-session memory that also helps an agent recall earlier work, through its own tools rather than the session index.

Related

• Semantic Search (AI-powered meaning-based search) — the local embedding model, the Ctrl+K blend, and the auto-disable circuit breaker.
• Global Search (Ctrl+K across everything) — the palette meaning-based results blend into, and its Ask AI escalation.
• Session Search (sidebar virtual project) — the Claude-driven search chat and its escalation ladder.
• Deep Links (omniscio:// URLs) — the clickable session links search results use.
• Quick Launch Modal — the floating composer whose Search tab reaches the same search.
• MemPalace (cross-session memory for your sessions) — a separate memory system for recalling earlier sessions.