Session archives

Open Sessions to export one retained session or all listed sessions. Import uses a native file picker and restores accepted data into the local database.

What an archive contains

.pulsern archives are gzip-compressed, versioned JSON. Archive format version 2 contains:

• a manifest with export time, counts, version, and redaction metadata;
• validated device and session metadata;
• the events belonging to those sessions;
• bookmarks and annotations stored separately from immutable events;
• a SHA-256 checksum for every device, session, event, bookmark, and annotation.

Import validation

Electron main validates an archive before changing SQLite. It rejects:

• unknown archive versions;
• malformed events or relationships;
• undeclared session references;
• count or checksum mismatches;
• files larger than 100 MiB compressed;
• payloads larger than 512 MiB after decompression.

A valid import writes all related data in one transaction. Event IDs remain unique, so importing the same archive again does not duplicate events. Normal retention rules run immediately afterward.

Sharing safely

Archives can contain request bodies, application state, console values, routes, and error context. PulseRN preserves the redaction already applied during capture, but it cannot determine whether free-form strings contain a secret.

Review an archive’s source session and your project’s data policy before sharing it. Do not commit archives or production captures to a repository.