Reference · Machines and disk

What a session leaves on disk

The files a session writes, where they live, and how they differ from the engine's own transcript.

<userData> is a folder Electron assigns per platform: %APPDATA%\Turret on Windows, ~/Library/Application Support/Turret on a Mac, and ~/.config/Turret on Linux. See Environment variables for overriding it per launch.

The archive

Every session writes into <userData>/archive/<session id>/.

File	Holds
`transcript.jsonl.zip`	One event per line
`tools.json`	The MCP servers and tools the session was given
`config/<hash>.json`	One per distinct spawn configuration
`config/<hash>.system-prompt.md`	The prompt the matching configuration ran under
`images/<sha256>.png`	Pictures a tool answered with
`models/<sha256>.stl.zip`	Geometry the design viewer was shown

The transcript and the geometry are zipped, each holding a single entry named after the zip without its .zip. Both are text or close to it, and compress to roughly a quarter. Nothing in the app reads them back, so the archive is a record to be opened by hand. Images are stored as they arrived, since PNG and JPEG are compressed already.

Nothing here is ever deleted. A session archived from the sidebar, or a session whose row is otherwise gone, keeps its directory.

A worktree session's own footprint

A session opened on a git worktree adds a second directory: <repo>/.claude/worktrees/<name>, or wherever a WorktreeCreate hook configured for that repository names instead. Removing the worktree, offered when the session is archived, takes that directory with it; the archive under <userData> stays regardless.

The engine's own transcript

A Claude session keeps a second transcript of its own, outside Turret's archive and outside its control, at ~/.claude/projects/<encoded working directory>/<transcript id>.jsonl. That id moves on a fork or a reset, so it is not a stable name for the conversation.

A Codex session keeps no such file. Codex resumes a session without being handed its history, so the archive under <userData> is the only record of a Codex conversation there is.