Has the chats/*.jsonl session format changed between 0.14.x and 0.22.x?

[jazzyalex]

I maintain Agent Sessions, an MIT-licensed macOS app that reads Qwen Code's local session history so you can search and resume past sessions. It's local-only, no telemetry.

I have a verification gap I can't close myself, and I'd rather ask than guess.

The problem: every Qwen transcript on my machine is 0.14.3. I have 0.21.13 installed, but my setup can't produce a fresh session anymore, so I have no way to see what a 0.22.x transcript actually looks like. That means our Qwen support is honestly only verified against 0.14.3, and I don't want to claim otherwise.

What I'd love someone on a current version to confirm — a one-line "yes, still the same" is genuinely enough:

1. Are sessions still written to ~/.qwen/projects/<project>/chats/*.jsonl, with archived ones under chats/archive/, and does QWEN_HOME still relocate that tree?
2. Do these fields still appear as they did in 0.14.x?
   • systemPayload.outputHistoryItems / systemPayload.systemInfo (the /about dump)
   • systemPayload.uiEvent
   • phase and rawCommand
   • contextWindowSize on assistant records
   • gitBranch on the envelope
3. Any new record types since 0.14.x that a reader should expect?

If it's easier to show than describe, a transcript from a throwaway prompt with anything sensitive stripped would answer all three at once — but please don't share a real work session.

Second, softer ask: if you use Qwen Code regularly and this sounds mildly interesting, we run a small steward program — a steward just eyeballs one agent's support after upstream releases and flags when the format moves. No code required. Entirely fine to answer the questions above and ignore this part.

Disclosure: I maintain the project. Asking here because you're the people who actually have 0.22.x sessions on disk.

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中文

我维护 Agent Sessions，一个 MIT 许可的开源 macOS 应用，可在本地读取 Qwen Code 的会话记录用于搜索与恢复。完全本地运行，无遥测。

问题： 我本机上所有 Qwen 会话记录都是 0.14.3 版本。虽然安装了 0.21.13，但当前环境已无法生成新会话，因此我无法确认 0.22.x 的记录格式。我们对 Qwen 的支持目前只在 0.14.3 上验证过，不想做超出事实的声明。

希望使用当前版本的朋友帮忙确认（回复“没变”即可）：

1. 会话是否仍写入 ~/.qwen/projects/<project>/chats/*.jsonl，归档会话是否仍在 chats/archive/，QWEN_HOME 是否仍会改变该目录位置？
2. 以下字段是否仍与 0.14.x 一致：systemPayload.outputHistoryItems / systemInfo、systemPayload.uiEvent、phase、rawCommand、assistant 记录上的 contextWindowSize、envelope 上的 gitBranch？
3. 0.14.x 之后是否新增了读取方需要处理的记录类型？

如果方便，用一句无关紧要的提示词生成一个会话、去除敏感内容后分享，即可一次性回答以上问题——请不要分享真实工作会话。

另外一个不勉强的请求： 如果你经常使用 Qwen Code，我们有一个小型 steward 计划——只需在上游发布后大致检查一下该 agent 的支持情况，发现格式变化时提醒一声，不需要写代码。只回答上面的问题、忽略这部分也完全没问题。

声明：我是该项目的维护者。在这里提问是因为你们才是真正拥有 0.22.x 会话文件的人。

[jx-grxf]

I don't have a sanitized 0.22 transcript to share, but I compared the shipped v0.14.3 and v0.22.3 source directly.

Short version: the basic layout is still recognizable, but the record format has definitely grown.

The active sessions are still stored as one JSONL file per session under:

<runtime base>/projects/<project>/chats/<session-id>.jsonl

and 0.22.3 uses chats/archive/ for archived sessions.

One detail: QWEN_HOME is read by getGlobalQwenDir() in 0.22.3, so it relocates the default tree now. The 0.14.3 storage code I checked did not read QWEN_HOME; it defaulted directly to ~/.qwen. QWEN_RUNTIME_DIR can still override the runtime-output location separately.

The fields you listed are still present in 0.22.3:

• phase, rawCommand and outputHistoryItems on slash-command payloads
• uiEvent on UI telemetry payloads
• contextWindowSize on assistant records
• gitBranch on the record envelope
• /about still creates a history item containing systemInfo

The top-level type values are still user, assistant, tool_result and system, but there are many new subtype values since 0.14.3, including custom_title, parent_session, session_source, session_model, rewind, notification, cron, file_history_snapshot, branch_checkpoint, goal_state, goal_runtime, realtime_message and turn_result.

There are also new optional fields for subagents and forks, such as agentId, agentName, isSidechain, agentRunId and forkedFrom.

So a reader written for 0.14.x should probably treat type + subtype as extensible and ignore unknown fields rather than rejecting the record.

Johannes

[jazzyalex]

Johannes — thank you, this is far more than I asked for. Diffing the two source trees to answer a question about transcripts is real work, and it answered all three points at once.

I went through our parser against your list. Where we already stand:

• QWEN_HOME — we read it, so we're correct for 0.22.x. Your detail that 0.14.3 didn't read it is the single most useful thing here: it means the behaviour I'd been treating as long-standing is actually new, and I'd have had the version story backwards. QWEN_RUNTIME_DIR we treat as a manual override, since it's process-local and can't be detected from outside.
• The fields — phase, rawCommand, outputHistoryItems, uiEvent, contextWindowSize, gitBranch are all parsed. Good to have them confirmed rather than assumed.
• Unknown records — already handled the way you suggest: unrecognised type/subtype combinations fall through to a catch-all instead of being rejected, so a 0.22.x session won't break a reader built for 0.14.x. Of your new subtypes we explicitly handle custom_title, goal_runtime, cron and notification; the rest will be carried as generic records rather than dropped.
• Still open on my side — the subagent/fork fields (agentId, agentName, isSidechain, agentRunId, forkedFrom). We render subagent trees for other agents, so if Qwen now threads them the same way there's real display work to do, and that's the one part I can't design from source alone.

To be straight about what this does and doesn't settle: it's a source diff, not a transcript, so I'm not going to claim we're "verified against 0.22.3" on the strength of it — our support stays recorded as verified against 0.14.3 until a real session confirms it. But it tells me nothing is broken, which is what I actually needed to know.

If you're ever running 0.22.x and generate a throwaway session, a look at whether those subagent fields appear in practice would close the last gap. And the standing offer: if you'd want to keep half an eye on Qwen support as it moves, the steward role is exactly the kind of thing you just did, minus the obligation. Either way — genuinely appreciated.