View Context History

UltraContext - Context history guide cover

Guide Overview

After this guide, you’ll be able to:

Rewind to any point in time
See exactly what your AI saw when it made a decision
Find where things went wrong in seconds, not hours

Why View Context History?

You know the feeling. Your agent does something unexpected. A user reports a bug. You open your logs and stare at a wall of JSON. Hundreds of messages across dozens of contexts. Timestamps everywhere. You scroll. And scroll. And scroll. Where do you even start? You feel powerless. The answer is somewhere in that mess, but finding it feels like searching for a needle in a haystack—blindfolded. Hours pass. Frustration builds. You start questioning your life choices. What if you could rewind to cherry-pick the exact moment things went wrong? You’d finally be in control of your agent. Understanding why it did what it did becomes trivial. This is why we built UltraContext. Every update or delete creates a version. Every append has a timestamp. Rewind to any moment—by version number, by timestamp, by message index—and see the exact state your AI saw. No more scrolling through logs. No more guessing. Just the facts you need. Like git, but for your context.

How Versions Work

Versions are automatically created on updates and deletes only. Appends don’t create versions.

How UltraContext versioning works — v0: create → v1: msg1 updated → v2: msg2 deleted

v0 (create)    @ 10:00
  ├─ append    @ 10:01
  └─ append    @ 10:05
v1 (update)    @ 11:00
v2 (delete)    @ 12:00

Get Version History

You can get the version history of a context by passing history: true to the get method. This will return the current state of the context, the version number, and the version history.

const { data, version, versions } = await uc.get(contextId, { history: true });

result = uc.get(context_id, history=True)
data, version, versions = result["data"], result["version"], result["versions"]

{
  "data": [...],
  "version": 2,
  "versions": [
    { "version": 0, "created_at": "2024-01-10T10:00:00Z", "operation": "create", "affected": null },
    { "version": 1, "created_at": "2024-01-10T11:00:00Z", "operation": "update", "affected": ["msg_abc"] },
    { "version": 2, "created_at": "2024-01-10T12:00:00Z", "operation": "delete", "affected": ["msg_xyz"] }
  ]
}

Time Travel

Go back to any point: by version number, timestamp, or message index.

By Version

Get exact state after a specific update or delete.

const { data } = await uc.get(contextId, { version: 1 });

result = uc.get(context_id, version=1)

By Index

Get first N messages (0 through index).

const { data } = await uc.get(contextId, { at: 5 });

result = uc.get(context_id, at=5)

By Timestamp

Get state at any moment, including between appends.

const { data } = await uc.get(contextId, { before: '2024-01-10T10:30:00Z' });

result = uc.get(context_id, before="2024-01-10T10:30:00Z")

Combine All

const { data } = await uc.get(contextId, {
    version: 1,
    before: '2024-01-10T11:15:00Z',
    at: 2,
});

result = uc.get(context_id, version=1, before="2024-01-10T11:15:00Z", at=2)

Order of priority: version → filter by time → slice by index.

Audit Trail

Every update or delete automatically records:

version — sequential version number
operation — create, update, or delete
affected — which message IDs changed
created_at — ISO timestamp

Optionally, you can also add metadata to track other information about the change.

await uc.update(contextId,
  { id: 'msg_xyz', content: 'Redacted' },
  { metadata: { reason: 'pii_redaction', performed_by: '[email protected]' } }
)

uc.update(context_id,
  id="msg_xyz",
  content="Redacted",
  metadata={"reason": "pii_redaction", "performed_by": "[email protected]"}
)

Retrieve with history: true:

{
  "versions": [
    {
      "version": 0,
      "operation": "create",
      "affected": null,
      "created_at": "2024-01-10T10:00:00Z"
    },
    {
      "version": 1,
      "operation": "update",
      "affected": ["msg_xyz"],
      "created_at": "2024-01-10T11:00:00Z",
      "metadata": {
        "reason": "pii_redaction",
        "performed_by": "[email protected]"
      }
    }
  ]
}

Examples

Debug Agent Failure

Something went wrong. Trace back to see what context it had when it failed.

import { UltraContext } from 'ultracontext';

const uc = new UltraContext({ apiKey: process.env.ULTRACONTEXT_API_KEY });
const contextId = 'ctx_abc123'; // your context ID

// get full history
const { data, versions } = await uc.get(contextId, { history: true });

// find error and see what AI saw before it
const error = data.find((m) => m.metadata?.error);
const prior = await uc.get(contextId, { at: error.index - 1 });

from ultracontext import UltraContext
import os

uc = UltraContext(api_key=os.environ["ULTRACONTEXT_API_KEY"])
context_id = "ctx_abc123"  # your context ID

# get full history
result = uc.get(context_id, history=True)

# find error and see what AI saw before it
error = next(m for m in result["data"] if m.get("metadata", {}).get("error"))
prior = uc.get(context_id, at=error["index"] - 1)

Compare Prompt Versions

Prompt was updated at v2. Compare agent behavior before and after.

import { UltraContext } from 'ultracontext';

const uc = new UltraContext({ apiKey: process.env.ULTRACONTEXT_API_KEY });
const contextId = 'ctx_abc123';

// get state at different versions
const before = await uc.get(contextId, { version: 1 });
const after = await uc.get(contextId, { version: 2 });

// compare system prompts
const promptBefore = before.data.find((m) => m.role === 'system');
const promptAfter = after.data.find((m) => m.role === 'system');

from ultracontext import UltraContext
import os

uc = UltraContext(api_key=os.environ["ULTRACONTEXT_API_KEY"])
context_id = "ctx_abc123"

# get state at different versions
before = uc.get(context_id, version=1)
after = uc.get(context_id, version=2)

# compare system prompts
prompt_before = next(m for m in before["data"] if m["role"] == "system")
prompt_after = next(m for m in after["data"] if m["role"] == "system")

Reconstruct User Session

Support ticket: “What did user X see at 3:42pm?”

import { UltraContext } from 'ultracontext';

const uc = new UltraContext({ apiKey: process.env.ULTRACONTEXT_API_KEY });
const contextId = 'ctx_abc123';

// get exact state at that moment
const snapshot = await uc.get(contextId, { before: '2024-01-10T15:42:00Z' });

from ultracontext import UltraContext
import os

uc = UltraContext(api_key=os.environ["ULTRACONTEXT_API_KEY"])
context_id = "ctx_abc123"

# get exact state at that moment
snapshot = uc.get(context_id, before="2024-01-10T15:42:00Z")

Next: Fork & Clone Contexts

Create copies from any point in history.

Context API

Fundamentals

Guides

Guide Overview

Why View Context History?

How Versions Work

Get Version History

Time Travel

By Version

By Index

By Timestamp

Combine All

Audit Trail

Examples

Debug Agent Failure

Compare Prompt Versions

Reconstruct User Session

Next: Fork & Clone Contexts

​Guide Overview

​Why View Context History?

​How Versions Work

​Get Version History

​Time Travel

​By Version

​By Index

​By Timestamp

​Combine All

​Audit Trail

​Examples

​Debug Agent Failure

​Compare Prompt Versions

​Reconstruct User Session

Next: Fork & Clone Contexts

Guide Overview

Why View Context History?

How Versions Work

Get Version History

Time Travel

By Version

By Index

By Timestamp

Combine All

Audit Trail

Examples

Debug Agent Failure

Compare Prompt Versions

Reconstruct User Session