# 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. · https://vintage.dev/ · unlock: https://vintage.dev/unlock · agents: https://vintage.dev/llms.txt