Chat history lost after opening a new window — unable to recover previous conversation

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Description:

I had a long conversation (28 messages) while working in my home directory (~). During that session, I asked the AI to generate documentation files, but it repeatedly failed due to permission issues (could not write to the home directory).

When I later opened a new window (targeting a different folder), the entire chat history from the previous session disappeared and could not be recovered.

Steps to Reproduce:

  1. Open Qoder without a specific project folder (defaults to home directory ~)

  2. Have a conversation with the AI (mine had 28 messages over ~45 minutes)

  3. Close the window or open a new window pointing to a different folder

  4. Try to access the previous conversation — it is gone

What I Found (Investigation):

  • Each new window creates a new workspaceStorage entry (timestamped ID like 1775648696501). The conversation is tied to that specific storage ID.

  • The message index (titles + timestamps) is still stored in ~/Library/Application Support/Qoder/User/globalStorage/state.vscdb under the key lingma.chat.localHistory.<storageId>, but only contains metadata — not the full conversation content including AI responses.

  • The full conversation content appears to exist in encrypted log files at ~/Library/Application Support/Qoder/logs/<date>/window<N>/encrypted/<sessionId>.log (~5MB), but these are encrypted with RSA-2048 + AES-128-GCM and cannot be recovered locally.

  • Opening the home directory again in a new window does not restore the previous conversation — it creates a brand new workspaceStorage with a different ID.

Expected Behavior:

  • Chat history should persist and be accessible across window sessions, especially for conversations in the same working directory.

  • Alternatively, there should be a “Chat History” panel that allows browsing and reopening past conversations regardless of the current workspace.

Actual Behavior:

  • Conversation is permanently inaccessible once the window is closed if a non-project folder (like ~) was used.

Session Details (for server-side recovery if possible):

  • Session ID: 93034a36-2058-41ac-b9e8-6829a60dcd05

  • WorkspaceStorage ID: 1775648696501

  • Date: April 8, 2026

  • OS: macOS Darwin 26.2

Request:

  1. If possible, please help recover the full conversation content for the session above from server-side logs.

  2. Please consider improving chat history persistence so it survives window/workspace changes.

2

Please submit an issue so that we can troubleshoot it together with the logs.

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