The chats that survived the sign-out
A MIT Windows app that reads Claude Code, Codex, and Cursor chats off disk, including accounts you are not signed into.
- Category
- Developer tools
- Who it is for
- A developer who uses more than one of Claude Code, Codex, and Cursor on Windows.
- Possible model
- Open source
- Difficulty
- Medium
- Inspired by
- ChatVault · ChatVault
- Original launch
- Watch the launch · Oct 17, 2026
Difficulty is an editorial estimate of technical and operational complexity, not a score.
Startup idea analysis by Startup Ideas. Last reviewed Oct 17, 2026. How we read a launch.
The startup idea
Sunny posted ChatVault on October 17. It keeps Claude Code, Codex, and Cursor chats in one place, across accounts. Search the history and keep local backups. Free, open source, Windows, and portable. The repository is ssanaullahrais/Chat-Vault. The readme says it reads, searches, backs up, and lets you continue a chat in another tool. MIT. Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit. There is an installer, an MSI, and ChatVault_x.y.z_x64-portable.exe. The installers are about 3 to 4 MB and use the WebView2 runtime that ships with Windows. It only reads the chat files, never uploads them, and needs no account. The only network request is to GitHub, to check for a new version. The screenshots are captioned as sample data, not real chats. The post does not mention the version check or the sample label. This page did not install it.
The opportunity is the history that survives a sign-out. A smaller product is search across the three tools on one machine. The post says the backups are local. The readme agrees, and then phones GitHub for updates.
Do not treat the screenshot counts as a customer's archive. The readme says they are samples. Do not say it is silent on the network.
The problem
Switching accounts makes the history look gone, while the files are still on the machine.
Who would pay for this?
- Primary
- A developer who uses more than one of Claude Code, Codex, and Cursor on Windows.
- Secondary
- Someone who has signed out and thought the chats were gone.
- Early adopter
- One search, one backup, the version-check line.
How could it make money?
Possible models. Nothing here is a claim about what ChatVault charges.
- No price. MIT.
- No account.
- The update check is the network exception.
What would the MVP look like?
- The three tools in one list.
- Search, including accounts that are signed out.
- A backup that stays on the PC.
- The sample-data label and the GitHub check.
How to validate the idea
- Ask five people to sign out of one tool and still find yesterday's chat.
- If the list is empty, it was not reading the files.
- Do not promise a Mac build. The readme does not.
How to differentiate
- It reads chats the tools already stored.
- Portable, as the post said.
- MIT.
- Do not become another coding agent.
Why this could be interesting now
The post and the readme agree on the three tools, Windows, portable, and local backups. The readme adds a GitHub version check and says the pictures are samples. The opening is the search, with both of those on the page.
Original product launch
This launch is inspiration and evidence that someone shipped, not a partnership. The idea above is our reading of the broader opportunity. ChatVault did not write it.
- Product
- ChatVault
- Source
- ChatVault
- Film
- ChatVault, the screenshots are samples
- Posted
- Oct 17, 2026 · 1:08
Product that inspired this idea
Sunny's post says ChatVault keeps Claude Code, Codex, and Cursor chats in one place, across accounts. Search, local backups, free, open source, Windows, and portable. The readme says the same three tools, MIT, Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit, and a portable exe beside the installer. It reads the chat files, does not upload them, and needs no account. The only network request is to GitHub, to check for a new version. The screenshots are labeled sample data, not real chats. The post does not mention that version check. This page did not open a chat archive.
Posted by @sanaullahrais. Watch the original launch. No separate product site is listed unless the post itself is the source.
- agents
- windows
Related startup ideas
- A drive that files the document and cites the page
Upload a pile of files, have them land in a folder a person would recognize, and answer a question with the page it came from.
- A visible team of agents in a world you can walk into
Use a shared world, not a log file, when several agents need a person to come over and decide.
- An Android remote for coding agents
A phone client for checking projects and steering agents when the laptop is closed.
- An inbox so the agents stay quiet
Collapse every coding-agent thread into one list, and only interrupt when one of them is stuck.
- Coding agents in the menu bar
Show which coding session is working, which is stuck, and let a person reply without opening the app.
- Cut the launch film from the app you already have
A skill that rebuilds the screens in a frame, times them to a track, and renders on the machine the coding agent already uses.
Looking for more ideas?
The full list is startup ideas for 2026, each one tied to a launch you can watch.
Browse startup ideas for 2026