An elephant never forgets — and neither should your AI. Search and resume past Claude Code conversations via MCP.
Connect Nelly Elephant MCP to Claude, Cursor or any other MCP client and it stops being a tab you switch to. An elephant never forgets — and neither should your AI. Search and resume past Claude Code conversations via MCP. The nelly elephant mcp mcp server is what makes that connection.
Personality, visuals, the whole elephant. Designed for human consumption.
Nelly is an MCP server that searches your past Claude Code session transcripts (JSONL files stored in ~/.claude/projects/) and helps you find and resume old conversations. It searches across ALL projects at once, regardless of which project you're currently working in.
The toolset is worth reading before you wire it up, because it tells you what the integration is really for:
nelly_instructions — Returns usage guide, platform info, sessions directory status, and diagnosticsnelly_search — Keyword search across all past sessions. Supports max_results (1-100), days_back (1-3650), and project filternelly_context — Expanded context from a specific session — surrounding lines around matchesnelly_recent — Lists most recent sessions by modification time. Supports count (1-100) and project filternelly-elephant-mcp on npm is all you need. Most clients run it directly, so configuration is a few lines and a restart.
Among the file and storage access options, the useful question is rarely "what can it do" but "what does it cost you to run" — permissions, credentials, and how much of your context its toolset consumes. Nelly Elephant MCP's toolset — nelly_instructions, nelly_search, nelly_context and 1 more — is a fair guide to whether it matches your workflow. It is maintained by spicyricecakes; worth a glance at recent repository activity before you build anything load-bearing on it.
SyncDev reviews every entry in this directory against the project's own documentation before publishing, and revisits them as servers change.
| Tool | What it does |
|---|---|
| nelly_instructions | Returns usage guide, platform info, sessions directory status, and diagnostics |
| nelly_search | Keyword search across all past sessions. Supports max_results (1-100), days_back (1-3650), and project filter |
| nelly_context | Expanded context from a specific session — surrounding lines around matches |
| nelly_recent | Lists most recent sessions by modification time. Supports count (1-100) and project filter |
Add to `~/.claude/mcp_settings.json`:
```json
{
"mcpServers": {
"nelly": {
"command": "nelly-elephant-mcp",
"args": []
}
}
}Configuration as documented by the project. Restart the client after saving.
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