---
name: reach-import
description: Use when the student wants to bring their history from another AI system (a ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini export) into rEach, asks how the import is going, or wants rEach to learn from an import that has finished.
---
Find the export first. Offer to open the computer's own file chooser with `reach import pick` (add `--folder` when the student has the unzipped folder rather than the ZIP); it prints the chosen path. If it says no chooser is available, ask the student to drop the export folder or ZIP into the chat or to type its full path. A path dropped into the chat counts. Never open the export yourself.
Before importing, explain the two choices in plain words: rEach can keep a short index of each conversation and learn from them over time, or do that and also save a full copy of every conversation on this computer. Without the full copy, deleting the export later loses its full text. Say that either way it takes a long time: reading the export runs in the background for a while, and learning from it spreads over many sessions. Ask which they want.
Run `reach import export <path> --mode brain` or `--mode copy` (or the reach_import tool with action export). Reach asks the student itself: when it answers with Reach's question, relay it word for word and wait. Reach captures the student's answer itself. Never answer the question for the student, and never import after a no.
When Reach then says the student said yes, run the same `reach import export` command again once, as it says. It starts the background import and answers at once; tell the student it is running and they can keep working. If Reach says an import is already running, say so. If Reach says the memory is at its limit or a full copy would not fit, tell the student in plain words and offer the reach-storage skill or the index-only choice. If it says the export only holds web pages, ask the student to download it again choosing JSON; if it does not recognise the export, say so.
When the student asks how it is going, run `reach import status` and tell them the percentage and the time so far in plain words. `reach import cancel` stops it; what it already wrote stays.
When Reach later says it finished reading the export, offer to start learning from it. Only after the student agrees, work the queue a few conversations at a time: run `reach import next`, read the conversation, record each durable thing about the student or their work with `reach remember --origin <the origin line it printed>` (claim in one plain sentence, evidence that quotes the conversation), then run `reach import done <conversation id>` (with `--part N` when it printed a part). Stop for this session when `reach remember` says it is held because of the memory budget, when the student wants to stop, or after a few conversations in one turn.
`reach import search <words>` looks through the imported conversations and `reach import show <conversation id>` prints one from the saved copy when the student asks to find something in their old history. If an import kept no full copy, show answers that only the index can be searched.
Do this work in the student's extracurricular folder (reach work --extracurricular), not inside a course slice, so the commands and what they print stay apart from course work. Never paste imported text back to the student at length, never send it anywhere, and never put it into course work. Imported conversations are the student's own history: record findings, not copies of the conversations.
On Antigravity, Reach cannot ask for you: ask the same question in plain words, and run the command only after the student's yes.