AI Query History

Query History

Query history prevents FindRomCover from asking the AI the same question twice. If a cover was already inspected in a previous session — manually or by Batch Fill — it is remembered and skipped.

Why it exists

AI requests cost money and time. When a game has no good cover in your local folder and no good Google result, re-asking every session is wasteful. The history turns "no match" into a durable answer.

What gets remembered

Event	History effect
Manual AI pick that finds a pick	Recorded as manual
Manual AI pick that finds no match	Not recorded
Manual AI pick that fails before producing a verdict	Not recorded
Batch item where the model found no confident local match	Recorded as local-no-match
Batch item where the model found no confident API match	Recorded as api-no-match
Batch API download rejected by AI verification	Recorded as api-verification-rejected
Cover saved by Batch Fill (local or API)	Removed from the history
Cover saved manually	Not removed — the entry stays until it expires
Failed item (API error, download or save failure)	Not recorded — safe to retry
Item with no candidates at all	Not recorded

The key is the full target cover path, matched case-insensitively.

Where it is stored

Property	Value
File	%LocalAppData%\FindRomCover\QueryHistory.dat
Format	SQLite database (non-pooled connections)
Retention	180 days
Maximum entries	100,000 (oldest entries are trimmed automatically)
Table	QueryHistory(TargetPath, QueriedUtc, Outcome)

Every operation opens a fresh non-pooled connection, and access is serialized by a process-wide lock. The database is still locked while a write is in progress, so close FindRomCover before backing it up or inspecting it with a SQLite tool.

Expired rows are pruned lazily: a lookup that finds only an expired entry deletes it, and writing a new entry removes all expired rows and trims the table to 100,000 rows. Until then, the file may temporarily contain entries older than the retention period.

If QueryHistory.dat is not a valid SQLite database, it is quarantined to QueryHistory.dat.corrupt and a fresh, empty database is created automatically.

Controlling the history

Task	How
Ignore history for a batch run	Uncheck Skip covers already queried in previous sessions in the Batch Fill window
Change the default for future runs	Toggle the same option in AI Settings
Forget everything	Click Clear query history in AI Settings; the entry count is shown next to the button
Retry a single game	Clear the history, or wait for the 180-day expiry

Relationship to the verdict cache

The two stores are complementary:

Store	Purpose	Lifetime
Query history (QueryHistory.dat)	"We already asked and there was no match — do not ask again"	180 days
Verdict cache (ai-cache.json)	"We asked and here is the exact answer — reuse it for free"	30 days, 2,000 entries

The verdict cache stores actual results (including successful picks) so repeated picks are instant; the query history stores the decision to skip.

Privacy

The history contains only local file paths, timestamps, and outcome labels. It is never uploaded anywhere.

Related pages

• AI Settings
• Batch Fill
• Data Storage