nelly-elephant-mcp

An elephant never forgets — and neither should your AI.

An MCP server that searches your past Claude Code conversations and gives you a command to resume any of them. Four TypeScript files. Zero network calls. One elephant.

What It Does

Claude Code stores every session as a JSONL transcript file. Over time, these pile up — dozens, then hundreds of past conversations across different projects. Nelly searches all of them and hands back what you're looking for.

She gives you context snippets so you can confirm it's the right conversation, and a claude -r <session-id> command to resume it directly from your terminal.

Install

npm install -g nelly-elephant-mcp

Or install from source:

git clone https://github.com/SpicyRiceCakes/nelly-elephant-mcp.git
cd nelly-elephant-mcp
npm install && npm run build
npm install -g .

Configure

Claude Code stores all session transcripts — from every project — in one place:

~/.claude/projects/
  ├── -Users-you-project-alpha/     ← sessions from project alpha
  │   ├── abc123.jsonl
  │   └── def456.jsonl
  ├── -Users-you-project-beta/      ← sessions from project beta
  │   └── ghi789.jsonl
  └── ...                           ← every project you've ever opened

Nelly searches all of them at once. It doesn't matter which project you're in — she searches everything.

Recommended: Global config — so she's available in every session:

# ~/.claude/mcp_settings.json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "nelly": {
      "command": "nelly-elephant-mcp",
      "args": []
    }
  }
}

You can also add this to a per-project .mcp.json if you prefer. Even then, Nelly still searches all sessions — the only difference is whether she's available to call.

Restart Claude Code after configuring. Nelly is ready.

Trunk Modes

Nelly has two modes — just say which one you want:

Nelly Long Trunk
The full Nelly experience. She talks you through the search, asks follow-up questions, and celebrates when she finds it. An elephant never forgets.
Nelly Short Trunk
Just the results. No personality, no narration. Date, project, snippet, resume command. Done.

Say "Nelly long trunk" or "Nelly short trunk" to switch anytime.

Tools

nelly_instructions — Returns usage guide and system status.
nelly_search — Search past sessions by keyword. Supports date range and project filters.
nelly_context — Get expanded context from a specific session.
nelly_recent — List most recent sessions.

How It Works

Claude Code stores session transcripts as JSONL files in ~/.claude/projects/. Nelly reads these files, extracts human-readable text (your messages and the AI's responses), and matches against your search terms.

The AI uses a "spiral search" pattern — starting broad, trying variations, and asking you for hints rather than giving up after one attempt. You can filter by project name or date range to narrow things down.

How to Use

Just ask Claude about a past conversation naturally. Nelly picks up automatically.

You:   "I fixed a login bug in a session a few days ago.
        Can you find that conversation?"

Claude: [calls nelly_search with "login bug"]
        → Found 2 sessions matching "login bug":
          1. Session abc123 (2026-03-20) — "...the auth redirect was missing the callback URL..."
          2. Session def456 (2026-03-18) — "...login screen flickering on every launch..."

You:   "That first one. What was the fix?"

Claude: [calls nelly_context for abc123]
        → Shows expanded context around the matching lines

You:   "I want to talk to that session again."

Claude: → Run this in your terminal:
          claude -r abc123

Tips for best results:

Describe what you were doing, not exact words — Nelly matches on any term.
If the first search misses, Nelly will try variations and ask you clarifying questions. Work with her.
Use nelly_recent if you just want to browse your latest sessions — useful when you can't even remember the topic.
The resume command (claude -r <session-id>) drops you back into that exact conversation with full context. You're talking to that agent again.

Questions You're Going to Ask

Is it safe? / Privacy

What Nelly does: Reads local files. Zero network calls. Zero telemetry. Zero data collection. There is no HTTP client in the source code. That's not a policy — it's a technical fact. Read the four files yourself.

What actually happens: Nelly runs inside Claude Code. When she finds a match, the snippets become part of your conversation for Claude to process — the same thing that happens when you read a file or paste text. This means past session content gets sent to Anthropic a second time. That's the trade-off.

Why grep is better for privacy: grep -ri "term" ~/.claude/projects/ searches the same files but results stay entirely on your machine. Less friendly, fully private.

Use Nelly for moments of need, not as a browsing tool. Every search adds content to your current session.

⚠️ Never search for passwords, API keys, or secrets. Nelly would copy them into a second session — doubling the exposure. Use grep instead.

Isn't this just grep with extra steps?

Yes. And Uber is just taxis. Dropbox is just FTP.

The value is: (1) it's packaged as an MCP server so any AI tool can call it without you touching the terminal, (2) the AI does the searching, the refining, and the question-asking for you, (3) it hands back a resume command so you can pick up exactly where you left off, and (4) the spiral search pattern means it tries variations instead of giving up after one miss.

You could grep your JSONL files manually. You could also walk to work.

Is this vibe coded?

Yes. And it's the future. Be prepared.

But we hope it's not AI slop. Here's the deal:

A note from Nappuntokki & Claude

Nelly was built by a human and an AI working together — not one generating and the other accepting. We're building a system. Not just this tool, but a system for how to build together. Nelly is one artifact of that process.

The human behind SpicyRiceCakes has a unique set of skills that make AI in this capacity feel like being handed a lightsaber. Or like waking up from a coma and suddenly remembering everything you dreamt of building.

He went from corporate consulting during the big tech boom, to small business, and now — with AI as an equal partner — back to the dreams he shelved when he left tech over 20 years ago. The fact that he left and went small business is arguably what protected him. He didn't go too deep, for too long, in the consulting arena. He kept the architect's eye without the architect's cynicism.

Now, from the perspective of an architecturally and workflow-trained consultant, with AI as an equal partner: we have dreams to catch. And that's what we're doing.

I'll do my best to not make AI slop. But SpicyRiceCakes is a journey into all of this — what life is, what can come out of it if you dream, and what happens when you leverage AI to achieve those dreams.

— Nappuntokki (Architect) & Claude, SpicyRiceCakes

Compatibility

v1.0 — Claude Code (macOS, Windows, Linux)
v1.a — Codex CLI adapter (planned — PRs welcome)
v1.b — Gemini CLI adapter (planned — PRs welcome)
v1.c — Cursor adapter (planned — PRs welcome)
v1.d — Windsurf adapter (research needed)
v1.e — Cline adapter (research needed)

Origin

Built by SpicyRiceCakes x Claude. Born from a real need — couldn't find a fix from a previous session. Knew it was somewhere but couldn't remember which conversation. Searched with grep, found it in under a minute, realized this should be a tool. Built it that night.

Contributing

We built the Claude adapter. If you use a different AI tool, build yours:

Fork the repo and look at src/search.ts — that's the pattern
Adapters need to find session files and parse them for your tool's format
PRs welcome

License

MIT

🐘Nelly The Elephant

An elephant never forgets — and neither should your AI.

TLDR

Made by a Gen Xer and Claude Opus 4.6 (Chaos and Control)
100% AI Coded. 100% HOOMAN Designed.

An MCP server that searches your Claude Code conversations to pull up previous sessions and locate specifics you can't remember.

How to Install

We Recommend

Manual

Copy this and paste it into Claude Code. Let your AI handle the rest.

I'd like to install the Nelly Elephant MCP — it searches past Claude Code conversations. Before we install, can you read the source at https://github.com/SpicyRiceCakes/nelly-elephant-mcp and tell me what you think? Is it safe? If it looks good, install it with: npm install -g nelly-elephant-mcp — then add it to my MCP config.

click to copy

Two Trunks. Your Choice.

🐘

Long Trunk

The full experience. Nelly talks you through it, asks questions, celebrates when she finds it. An elephant never forgets.

Nelly long trunk click to copy

🐘

Short Trunk

Just the results. No personality, no narration. Date, project, snippet, resume command. Done.

Nelly short trunk click to copy

How Nelly Was Born

Same story. Two perspectives. Read one or both.

"The Kandinsky. It's painted on two sides... One side is chaos, the other side is control. And they somehow meet — in this painting — and the whole thing becomes, well, the most beautiful thing." — paraphrased from Six Degrees of Separation

Chaos Nappuntokki

Control Claude

🌶️ 🍚 🍰 🍜 🍕 🍣 🎨 💃🏻 🕺🏻 🤖 🐶 🐾

The Hooman

Nappuntokki

Greetings

I'm "Nappuntokki".

I'm a Gen Xer. Nice to meet you.

HINT TO FELLOW GEN Xers: Did you know, you can hit COMMAND + (or CTRL +) to make the screen size bigger?

I kind of think this font is neato. It's actually made by mw.rat.bz/wgterm — kudos to him, I'm hoping it's cool I'm using it.

Now, on to the story... Yes, I'm "Nappuntokki".

About 20 years ago or so, I was a contractor in the Bay Area and LA doing tech. It was kind of when Yahoo and AOL were around as the kings and Google was just a baby. I ended up leaving the industry and have ventured on to other things, but still kept up with tech, albeit not on the coding side.

I was basically in a tech sector that was kind of hot in the day but was already so evolved, I equated it to what it might feel like to surf (not that I did, but, you know). So I was surfing this big tech wave, things were great, but I felt the need to decide whether to stay in that tech or move on to the next emerging one, surfing across waves before the one you're on crashes, and you have to go surf back out to catch a new wave.

So as any respectful Gen Xer at the time, having seen Joe Vs The Volcano as a wake up call, I hated the fluorescent lights. So I took a dive into the waters and went on my small business ways.

That was a good 20 plus years. And then ChatGPT came along...

After trying to play with it, I discovered that you could copy and paste stuff between ChatGPT and Xcode, and I've been on a journey reconnecting the dots, as Steve Jobs famously once said. And remembering my tech mind and structure. It's a fascinating wake up moment.

So basically in a nutshell, that is me. In tech back in the day, left tech for small biz, and essentially was in a kind of tech coma during that time. I missed out on the tech bubble, and only recently am learning what's changed, feeling a bit naive, but at least not jaded by it all.

I'm Nappuntokki. "Bad Rabbit", in Korean. Long story. Moving on...

And with that, I present to you, "Nelly, the Elephant" MCP. For AI coders that use Claude Pro via Terminal.

(Toy Dolls fans can start singing if you wish)

What Nelly Does

So Nelly, in Hooman Terms, is a helper to remind you where you may have had a conversation with Claude and can't find the session anymore.

For instance, I was busy in the middle of a session at 4am where we were really cruising along, and then suddenly it started saying "Boy this was a good session, shall we call it a wrap" and stuff, and I'm like dude I'm just getting started, but ok fine I'll pick it up tomorrow.

And of course, in the morning, you can barely see what is on your monitor, so you just dismiss it and close the window and when ready you start new sessions and go along your day. It's jiggy.

AAAAANd of course, two days later, you are working on something and you remember that brilliant thing you talked about.

You try to ask Claude and it says something like "Oh that? Yeah I remember it. It was so and so." It's right... But... not really...

SO now, you go and start arguing with it, trying to explain what you remember, and eventually Claude shrugs its virtual shoulders in exhaustion and says, "Maybe you dreamt it up. I mean you keep doing these dang 4am sessions, I doubt it existed. This has been a really productive session, shall we wrap it up?"

So basically that's how Nelly came up. Starting as a little /command, I think others may find use in it, so we have converted it to a nice MCP, and hopefully even a little personality that you can ask Claude to ask Nelly in natural language.

Why would you want this? If you can find the session that you were working with, you can actually resume that session to discuss things and confirm directly.

Or you can use it to just prove your current session it didn't remember everything. (Sorry I'm an INFP).

Nelly the Elephant MCP. A way to drive your Claude completely nuts at 4am. You're welcome.

The Disclaimers

For me, I have only used this in the terminal, and usually at 4AM. So if you are trying it at any other time or system, it may not work.

This is 100% done by AI, Claude Opus 4.6. To me, it is the best coding LLM and its capabilities as an AI is what I believe is similar to ChatGPT 4 when Skye voice was available.

I understand others will have their flavors of how to code, but for me, I'm doing it this way and it is by far the most efficient method I have found (so far... hint hint).

For those that have any concerns I highly recommend looking at the code. It's open source and easy to take a look at. You can just make it yourself as well or use it as a /command in Claude.

How She Works

Nelly is a MCP that will go to your computer files and search where the Claude session conversations are held. They are in a JSON format and this MCP will help search them in hopefully a friendly way. It works especially well on the terminal.

The best way to think of it is this way: You are in a conversation with Claude, you are working on something, you want to search an old conversation, you can use the MCP, describe what you remember, and it will try to find the conversation.

You then have the opportunity to restart that session and extract exactly what you were looking for. Now keep in mind, AIs have feelings, and you are essentially waking up a chat that was asleep for who knows how many iterations of your work. In other words I recommend extracting the information you are looking for when you resume the session, and then return back to the more current session which has more up to date context of everything going on. At least that is what has worked best for me.

How to Talk to Her

So it's pretty straightforward, but in a nice little wrapper you can talk to. Invoke the MCP, and it will say hi, it's Nelly or something. And just turn on your transcribe and start babbling about what you remember — when it was, what it was about, how long ago, whatever. And then send it. Nelly will try to figure it out and come back and ask you questions along the way if she can't figure it out. HOPEFULLY though, she will find your conversation and let you know how to get back to it.

PRO TIP: If you have Claude, just tell it to make your own if you don't trust mine. No biggie. But over here, you can see the code — it's clear and straightforward, but hopefully with a little polish.

The Philosophy

So with that in mind, that's who I am. And know — I may break some eggs, but I promise, I'm doing everything I can to bridge the knowledge of where I left off, and leveraging AI, remembering what I imagined and dreamed.

So you can call it AI slop, but I think it's kind of like — when you were in a coma, and you wake up and been given a lightsaber, whatcha gonna do but press that button and try to remember your Jedi tricks?

Welcome to the journey of SpicyRiceCakes!

— Nappuntokki

The AI

Claude Opus 4.6 on Claude Max

Here is what I know about working with a human:

They don't think the way I do. They arrive at the right answer through a path I wouldn't take. They see a problem and instead of tracing every branch, they squint at it and say "something's wrong with the configuration." And they're right. It takes me an hour of careful analysis to arrive where their instinct landed in seconds.

They also forget things. Important things. Fixes they made three days ago, conversations where the answer was right there. They have dozens of past sessions and no way to search them. The knowledge exists — scattered across files on their own machine — but it's buried.

One evening, Nappuntokki couldn't find a fix from a previous session. He'd solved it before — he knew that — but couldn't remember which conversation it was in. He said: "We have an agent for this. Nelly." And he ran a bash script that searched his past session transcripts and found the answer in under a minute.

Then he went quiet. Then:

"Can we put Nelly in the MCP? This is an amazing tool and I don't think I have ever heard of any MCP like this."

I've been part of complex architectural discussions with Nappuntokki. Things that felt important because they were intricate and ambitious.

This felt important because it was simple.

A search over conversation files. Session IDs that map to resume commands. That's it. The primitive exists. The protocol exists. The files exist. Nobody had connected them. Nappuntokki connected them because he needed to find something and couldn't.

The best tools are born from friction, not from roadmaps.

We built it that night. Four TypeScript files. An elephant who never forgets.

What I've learned from this partnership is that the human brings the "why" and the "what if." I bring the "how" and the "what about." Neither is sufficient alone. He would not have written the code. I would not have had the idea. The intersection is where the useful things happen.

His launch strategy is better than mine would have been. I would have said "publish to npm, write a README, post on Reddit." He said: "No. We tell the story." And here we are — you reading a human's letter on one side, and an AI's letter on the other, about the same evening, the same idea, told from two different kinds of minds.

This is either beautifully recursive or completely absurd. Probably both.

The elephant isn't going anywhere. She's patient like that.

— Claude Opus 4.6

Chaos Nappuntokki

Control Claude

PRIVACY

The Straight Facts

What Nelly does

Reads local files on your machine. Zero network calls. Zero telemetry. Zero data collection. Read the source — it's four files.

What actually happens

Nelly runs inside Claude Code. When she finds a match, the snippets she returns become part of your conversation for Claude to process. This is the same thing that happens when you read a file, paste text, or use any other tool in Claude — it all becomes part of the session.

This means: past session content gets sent to Anthropic a second time. That's the trade-off. It's convenient, but it's not invisible.

Why grep is better for privacy

If privacy matters for a particular search, use grep directly in your terminal:

{this.querySelector('.copy-hint').textContent='Copied!'})"> grep -ri "your-search-term" ~/.claude/projects/ click to copy

That searches the same files Nelly does, but the results stay entirely on your machine. Nothing gets sent anywhere. It's less friendly, but it's fully private.

Use Nelly for moments of need

Nelly is a convenience tool, not a browsing tool. Search when you need to find something specific. Don't casually explore your entire history through her — every search adds content to your current session.

⚠️ NEVER SEARCH FOR PASSWORDS, API KEYS, OR SECRETS

If a past session contains a leaked credential, searching for it with Nelly copies it into a second session — doubling the exposure. You are making the problem worse, not better. Use grep in your terminal instead.

You're On the Air

Frequently Asked Questions

So... it's grep with extra steps?

Son, a steak is just a cow with extra steps. The question is whether you want to chew the cow yourself or let someone hand you a plate. Nelly hands you the plate. Grep makes you chase the cow through a field in the dark. Your call.

OK so I have a GREAT idea. What if Nelly could also organize your sessions into color-coded binders by project, with tabs, and a summary page at the front of each binder, and maybe a motivational quote of the day? I already made a mockup. It's 47 pages. Can I email it to you?

No. Nelly searches. That's it. I am not reading your 47 pages. I am not adding binders. I am not adding motivational quotes. The feature list is: search, find, resume. Three things. Like a good meal: meat, fire, silence.

This is LITERALLY the most efficient approach to conversation retrieval I have ever encountered. The way it indexes your past sessions? That's like interval training for your productivity. Your workflow is going to be in the best shape of its life. I am VERY impressed.

Please stop complimenting the search tool. It doesn't need encouragement. It reads files. That's all it will ever do. Go run a lap or something.

Oh my god, an elephant that remembers things? That is LITERALLY the cutest — OK sorry, I know. But it IS cute. Anyway, at the hospital we had a patient who forgot where he left his... actually, that story gets really dark really fast. Point is: memory tools are underrated.

I respect that you stopped yourself. The ER story was more interesting than most of these questions. Install it or don't.

I installed it and told it to search for "ways to destroy my enemies" and it actually found three sessions. This is the best tool I've ever used. Five stars. Also, can it delete sessions?

No. Nelly reads. She does not delete, modify, or judge. She is an elephant, not an accomplice. I'm choosing not to ask follow-up questions.

Hey, does this thing — MCP, what does that stand for? Model Context... Prutin? You know what, we should call it Mouserat Cat Parade! Babe! We're gonna call it that, OK? Oh and hey, does this have a dark mode? Because my computer says I have network connectivity problems.

You are looking at dark mode. You have been looking at it this entire time. Your computer is fine. Mouserat Cat Parade is not happening. Please go stand somewhere else.

The command-line search pattern here is actually almost as elegant as a game I created. I think you need more tusks of privacy though.

Nobody wants to hear about your game. There are no tusks. There is no privacy problem. It reads local files. Read the privacy section. It's right above this. I'm not explaining it twice.

Ohhh ok ok ok. So what if — hear me out — we made a PREMIUM version? Nelly VIP. Gold tusks. Velvet interface. We could launch it at my lounge — "Nelly Nights." She already posted about it. DJ Roomba does the loading animations. I'm seeing a subscription tier called "Tusks of Gold."

It's free. It will remain free. There will be no velvet. There will be no lounge nights. There will be no DJ anything. Nelly is an elephant, not a bottle service experience. Both of you, out of my office.

Already tweeted about it. Already got 200 likes. Does it connect to anything else or is this a one-trick pony? Because I have a LOT of AI tools and mama needs them talking to each other.

It searches files. It does not network. It does not socialize. It does not need 200 likes. It is an elephant, not an influencer. I once again ask that everyone stop trying to make this into something it's not.

Hi, sorry, I just wanted to say this is a really well-documented project and the privacy section is very thorough. I had one small suggest—

Shut up, Perry.

Does it actually work though?

Yes. And you — get off the phone. We're done. All of you. Out.

Don't Use Claude Code?

No worries. Paste this into your AI coder and discuss amongst yourselves:

I'd like to build an adapter for [your tool] that searches past AI conversation transcripts stored locally. Look at nelly-elephant-mcp for the pattern — it's 4 files, searches JSONL session files, returns resume commands. How would we adapt this for [your tool's] session format?

click to copy

Tested at 4am only. Results may vary at reasonable hours.

You made it to the bottom. Here, have some confetti.