Ai chat Recovering

Support Bug Reports
,
1

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

English (Support request to Cursor team)
Subject: Request for help recovering AI conversation history for workspace after fixing project open failure
Hello Cursor team,
I am writing to ask for help recovering AI conversation history for a specific workspace.
What happened
The project at C:\lucido\lucidoDevel\gaspi\gaspi2024_www suddenly stopped opening in Cursor (it still opened in VS Code). The developer tools showed errors such as illegalState - setting UNKNOWN service instance, Assertion Failed: Argument is undefined or null, and No Connect transport provider registered.
Through troubleshooting, we identified that the problem was related to workspace storage for that path, in particular the state.vscdb file under
C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\Cursor\User\workspaceStorage\83b052bcb8d51f54478039d55b83af68.
When that state.vscdb (or the whole workspace storage folder) was removed or replaced, the project at C:\lucido\lucidoDevel\gaspi\gaspi2024_www started opening again in Cursor.
However, all AI conversation history for that workspace is now gone. We understand that this history was stored in state.vscdb (and possibly related files in the same workspace storage folder).
What we are asking
We have backups of the original state.vscdb and the 83b052bcb8d51f54478039d55b83af68 workspace storage folder from before the fix.
We would like to recover the AI conversation history that was associated with C:\lucido\lucidoDevel\gaspi\gaspi2024_www.
Could you please advise:
How we can restore or extract the AI chat/composer history from the backed‑up state.vscdb (or from the backed‑up workspace storage folder) and have it show up again in Cursor for that workspace?
Whether Cursor provides any official tool or documented procedure for importing/restoring workspace-specific AI conversation history from such backups?
The exact storage format used for AI conversations in state.vscdb (e.g. schema, key names, structure), so we can attempt a custom export/import if no official method exists?
We would like to recover the past AI discussions for this project without breaking the current ability to open the workspace. Any guidance or tools you can provide would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you for your help.

Steps to Reproduce

At keyboardshortcut, I setting composer.openComposer to ctrl+shift+L
and i do ctrl+shift+L
and suddenly the project was loading..
and close and open the project.
but it doesn’t open..

Screenshots / Screen Recordings

cursor ai chat history

cursor_ide.txt (27.6 KB)

cursor_cursor2.txt (13.3 KB)

Operating System

Windows 10/11

Version Information

Version: 2.4.21 (user setup)
VSCode Version: 1.105.1
Commit: dc8361355d709f306d5159635a677a571b277bc0
Date: 2026-01-22T16:57:59.675Z
Build Type: Stable
Release Track: Default
Electron: 39.2.7
Chromium: 142.0.7444.235
Node.js: 22.21.1
V8: 14.2.231.21-electron.0
OS: Windows_NT x64 10.0.26200

Does this stop you from using Cursor

No - Cursor works, but with this issue

3

Hey! Your chat history isn’t deleted. It’s saved in the state.vscdb file you backed up.

Here’s a detailed restore guide: Chat stuck on “Loading Chat” — cannot access previous conversation - #16 by Danivisit

Quick steps:

  1. Check your backup folder. Open the saved folder 83b052bcb8d51f54478039d55b83af68 and look for state.vscdb inside.

  2. Extract from state.vscdb:

    • Install DB Browser for SQLite
    • Open your saved state.vscdb
    • Search for keys like workbench.panel.aichat.view... or workbench.panel.composerChatViewPanel...
    • The chat data is stored as JSON, so you can copy it out

  3. Continue the conversation. If you extract a .md file or JSON with the chat content:

    • Start a new chat
    • Attach the restored file and ask the AI to read it and continue from where you left off

Sadly, there’s no official import tool yet. The schema has internal dependencies like tabId and workspaceId, so direct injection is hard. Even if you copy the data into a new state.vscdb, mismatched IDs can stop it from loading.

For the future, consider using SpecStory to auto-back up chats, or use the built-in Export Chat option (the three dots menu) for important conversations.