hellodigua/chatlab-import

ChatLab Import

Import local chat exports through the chatlab CLI. Always preview the exact write. Treat an explicit request to import as authorization to continue after a successful preview; do not ask for a second confirmation.

Good Fit

• Import a local chat export for the first time.
• Re-import a newer export and add only new messages.
• Let an external agent handle file detection and session matching safely.

For read-only analysis of records already in ChatLab, use chatlab-analyze instead.

Install this skill with:

npx skills add ChatLab/ChatLab --skill chatlab-import -g

Workflow

1. Check the CLI and resolve one exact file path:

chatlab --help

If the CLI is missing, tell the user to install it with npm install -g chatlab-cli. Do not install software without approval. Do not guess between multiple files, and quote the path in every command.

2. Preview the import without writing:

chatlab import "/absolute/path/to/chat-export.json" --dry-run --json

If the user selected an existing session, include --session-id <session-id> in both preview and import.

3. Summarize only the plan: create or update mode, target session ID, scanned messages, new messages, duplicates, and match method or create reason. Never quote message bodies.

4. Decide from the preview:

• If the user asked only to preview or inspect, stop without writing.
• If importMode is incremental and newMessageCount is 0, report that the session is already up to date and stop.
• If importMode is incremental and there are new messages, continue automatically without another confirmation.
• If importMode is created, continue automatically. When createReason is ambiguous, preserve existing sessions by creating a new one and explain this choice in the final result.
• If the result does not identify a safe action, stop and explain what is missing.

5. When the decision permits writing, run the same command without --dry-run, keeping the file, target, and format unchanged:

chatlab import "/absolute/path/to/chat-export.json" --json

Report the resulting session ID, import mode, new-message count, and duplicate count from the final JSON envelope.

Guardrails

• Never skip the preview, edit ChatLab databases directly, or delete or merge sessions.
• Never reveal a full chat export or message bodies.
• Never invent a file path, parser format, or session ID.
• Follow error.hint only when the correction is unambiguous.
• For FILE_NOT_FOUND, request the correct path. For UNRECOGNIZED_FORMAT, inspect chatlab formats. For IMPORT_IN_PROGRESS, retry later. For INVALID_SESSION_ID, request a valid ID.