nelly_context
Get expanded context from a specific session. Use this after nelly_search when the user wants to see more detail from a particular session before resuming it.
LABSCO SUMMARY
The value here is entirely in the material already existing — every session was already transcribed, and nothing was reading it.
Anyone who works this way accumulates hundreds of sessions containing solved problems, rejected approaches and specific fixes, all sitting on disk unreadable because there is no way in. Searching them by content costs nothing to adopt and recovers work already done. The expand-around-a-hit step is what makes it usable rather than frustrating: a matched line is rarely the answer, and the reasoning either side of it usually is. The status tool earns its place by distinguishing 'you have no history' from 'the directory is wrong', which are otherwise identical.
What it is
A search layer over locally stored Claude Code session transcripts: find past conversations by what was said, expand the surrounding context, and list recent sessions.
What you get
- nelly_search searches across all session transcripts by content, so a conversation is findable by what it was about rather than by when it happened.
- nelly_context expands a specific session around a search hit, which is the step that turns a matched line into the reasoning around it.
- nelly_recent lists the most recent sessions for the case where you remember roughly when but not what.
- nelly_instructions reports the platform, the sessions directory and whether session data is actually available — so a setup problem is visible rather than looking like an empty history.
Requirements
Local Claude Code session transcripts on the machine — the status tool reports whether they were found.
Setup effort
One command — npx -y nelly-elephant-mcp
USE CASES
01
Finding the session where you solved this before
Search past conversations by what was discussed, then expand the context around the hit to recover the reasoning rather than the line.
02
Picking up something from earlier this week
List recent sessions when you remember roughly when rather than what.
03
Working out why nothing is found
Check the platform and sessions directory, since an empty result and a misconfigured path look the same.
4 tools
Counted once with only startup setup. Other versions, modes or optional credentials may expose a different list.
nelly_instructions
Check Nelly's status — platform, sessions directory, and whether session data exists. Useful for diagnostics. Instructions are already loaded via MCP init.
nelly_recent
List the most recent Claude Code sessions. Useful when the user doesn't remember specific keywords but knows it was recent.
nelly_search
Search past Claude Code conversations. Nelly searches through all session transcripts for matching keywords and returns sessions with snippets and resume commands. Use multiple searches with different terms for best results (spiral search pattern).
BEFORE YOU INSTALL
What to know first
Tools you get
4 tools when we connected.
Requires
npx on PATH
CONTEXT COST
Light Standing cost
Rated by the size of the 4 tool definitions that ride along on every turn, not by how many there are
INSTALLATION
Connect your client
Add the block to your client, or run the command directly.
Server setup
Configuration file
JSON
{
"mcpServers": {
"nelly-elephant-mcp": {
"command": "npx",
"args": [
"-y",
"nelly-elephant-mcp"
]
}
}
}npx
TERMINAL
npx -y nelly-elephant-mcp
