Skip to content
Chimera

chimera otter export / import — round-trip a session

chimera otter export / import — round-trip a session

Section titled “chimera otter export / import — round-trip a session”

Pack a session’s summary.json + every event-*.json into a single file (json / md / html); replay the JSON form on another machine or after ~/.chimera/eventlog/ has been pruned.

Usage

Section titled “Usage”
Terminal window
chimera otter export <SESSION_ID> [--export-format json|md|html] [--export-output PATH]
chimera otter import <FILE> [<NEW_ID>] [--import-overwrite]
  • <SESSION_ID> — directory name under ~/.chimera/eventlog/ (e.g. otter-20260507T120000-71032a5e).
  • <FILE> — JSON envelope produced by export --export-format json. Markdown / HTML are read-only — import only accepts the JSON form because it is the lossless representation.
  • <NEW_ID> — optional rename target on import so a clone can land with a fresh id without mutating the source file.

When --export-output is omitted the rendered output prints to stdout so you can pipe it to gist, pbcopy, or your favorite share sink.

Examples

Section titled “Examples”
Terminal window
# Export the last otter session as Markdown.
chimera otter export $(ls -t ~/.chimera/eventlog | grep '^otter-' | head -1) \
  --export-format md --export-output /tmp/transcript.md


# Round-trip a session to a coworker.
chimera otter export otter-20260507T120000-71032a5e \
  --export-output session.json
scp session.json coworker:~/
ssh coworker "chimera otter import ~/session.json"


# Replay it locally under a new id (e.g. so you can A/B compare two
# versions of the same prompt).
chimera otter import session.json otter-replay-1

Schema

Section titled “Schema”

JSON envelope:

{
  "schema": "chimera.otter.session/1",
  "summary": { ...summary.json contents... },
  "events":  [ ...event-*.json contents... ],
  "exported_at": "2026-05-07T12:34:56Z"
}

Round-trip guarantee: import_session(export_session(<id>)) recreates the same on-disk layout (modulo the exported_at envelope key).

Renderers

Section titled “Renderers”
  • json — lossless. Re-importable.
  • md — readable transcript. Heads with the summary as a bullet-list, then walks events as fenced code blocks. Falls back to json blocks for events without a textual text / content field.
  • html — single self-contained <!doctype html> document wrapping the same transcript inside a <pre> block; opens in any browser without a build step.

How it works

Section titled “How it works”

chimera/otter/export_import.py reuses chimera.otter.sessions.get_session to load a session and chimera.otter.sessions.default_eventlog_root so a custom eventlog root (test fixtures, mounted volumes) is honored end-to-end. Imports write summary.json + event-NNNNNN.json so the existing otter sessions show <id> inspection works out of the box.