the export that isn’t: imessage → claude, live

the usual route is a one-off export — dump chat.db to CSV, paste chunks into a context window, repeat next month. vintage replaces that: a resident local index that claude queries directly, always current.

because it is a live index, not a file, your agent gets search and person timelines instead of a wall of text — and yesterday’s messages are already there.

vintage runs entirely on your Mac: it reads the local Apple databases, builds one person-graph index, and serves it over cli and mcp. no cloud, no account, nothing leaves the machine.

try it

brew install systemoperators/tap/vintage
vintage index sync
claude mcp add vintage -- vintage mcp --stdio
vintage messages unreplied   # works in the terminal too

live index beats a file export

always current — the daemon re-syncs; no re-export ritual
person-linked — a thread is a relationship, not a phone number
scoped answers — claude pulls the 14 relevant messages, not 40,000 lines
cross-source — the same question can pull the related note and mail

honest limits

if you genuinely need a portable archive file, use an exporter — vintage is an index, not a backup tool

questions

can claude read my whole imessage history?

yes — the index covers the full local store. claude queries it with search/person/recent tools rather than loading it all into context.

do i have to re-export when new messages arrive?

no. the daemon keeps the index warm (5-minute sync loop), so the next question includes the latest messages.

local. no account. never phones home. · everything vintage does · the engine