[Critical Bug] Session history lost after auto-update from 2.0.44 to 2.0.49

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It happened to me today, there was no reason to lose all conversation including the very last one. Current version 2.1.12, and it might not be related to the same issue stated here, but something still is amiss

@OscarOrtigueira - it's not lost, look in your .claude/projects directory. I built a small agent that searched for recent phrases, we found the content, and identified the session. Then I restarted claude with that session id and lost nothing.

@OscarOrtigueira - it's not lost, look in your .claude/projects directory. I built a small agent that searched for recent phrases, we found the content, and identified the session. Then I restarted claude with that session id and lost nothing.

Thanks for the tip, I will have that in mind for the next time (indeed, the conversation is there). Still, I believe that it should appear directly on Claude without extra steps, unless this is a new functionality/change on how the resume functionality works, although I would find that.. strange.

For sure, it's a big @OscarOrtigueira - just one with the index to the content vs. lost content (which is worse). This is just an ugly workaround till Claude and team fix it.

Different from what @OscarOrtigueira has, in my .claude file I only have a settings.local.json file that contains the permissions I gave to claude during that said session. But in --resume (or /resume) I see some of my conversation, just not the one that I need.

Edit:
My bad, the .claude folder I was looking at was my local one. For Windows users, you need to look at C:\Users\YourName\.claude and for macOS / Linux / WSL: ~/.claude/ (e.g., /home/yourname/.claude/)

How to recover the conversation:
Open the file ~/.claude/history.jsonl in a text editor.

Search for a keyword or filename from your old discussion.

Each entry will show a sessionId (a UUID like 8e5b...).

Once you have the ID, go back to your project terminal and run:

claude --resume YOUR_SESSION_ID

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Different from what @OscarOrtigueira has, in my .claude file I only have a settings.local.json file that contains the permissions I gave to claude during that said session. But in --resume (or /resume) I see some of my conversation, just not the one that I need. Edit: My bad, the .claude folder I was looking at was my local one. For Windows users, you need to look at C:\Users\YourName.claude and for macOS / Linux / WSL: ~/.claude/ (e.g., /home/yourname/.claude/) How to recover the conversation: Open the file ~/.claude/history.jsonl in a text editor. Search for a keyword or filename from your old discussion. Each entry will show a sessionId (a UUID like 8e5b...). Once you have the ID, go back to your project terminal and run: claude --resume YOUR_SESSION_ID

work like a charm, for strange reason when I used /resume command in claude, it missed my latest history. I'm on 2.1.25 version

Still happening in v2.1.32 on macOS (Sequoia, Apple Silicon)

Same pattern as originally reported - /resume only shows sessions created after the update. All pre-update sessions are gone from the resume picker while the data remains intact on disk.

Environment

• Claude Code version: 2.1.32
• Platform: macOS (Darwin 25.2.0), MacMini M2
• Auth: Anthropic API (Max plan)

Findings

Session files intact: 91 session .jsonl files exist in ~/.claude/projects/<project-hash>/ for this workspace alone (oldest from Jan 11). 543 unique sessions across all projects.

History intact: ~/.claude/history.jsonl has 4,468 entries going back to Sep 2025, continuously populated through today.

Only post-update sessions visible: /resume only shows sessions created after the update. All prior sessions are invisible to the picker.

Possible trigger

.claude.json shows several migration flags that appeared between the Jan 28 backup and current state:

• opus45MigrationComplete
• opusProMigrationComplete
• hasShownOpus46Notice
• thinkingMigrationComplete
• sonnet45MigrationComplete

These model migrations (or the accompanying Claude Code updates) likely reset or failed to rebuild the session index.

Confirmation

This is the same root cause as the original report: format/index changes during updates don't migrate existing sessions. The old session .jsonl files are all there but not picked up by the new /resume discovery mechanism. This has now happened across at least 3 major version ranges (2.0.x, 2.1.x) and on all platforms (Linux, Windows, macOS).

It seems like resume history worked correctly before updating to 2.1.39 (I updated it yesterday).
After a while I discovered, that all history like has been deleted and only the last entries from a week ago exist

Environment
Claude Code version: 2.1.39
Platform: Arch Linux (linux-cachyos)
Auth: Anthropic Console (Team Account)

This is exactly the kind of thing that erodes trust in the tool. You invest hours building up session context, then an auto-update wipes it all out.

The root problem: session data should be treated as user data with strong durability guarantees, not as disposable cache that can be broken by updates.

A few protective measures:

1. Pin your version with npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code@2.0.44 to prevent auto-updates until you are ready
2. Backup your session directory (~/.claude/) before updates
3. Use Mantra — it maintains its own session index independently of Claude Code internals. Auto-updates, version migrations, storage format changes — none of them affect Mantra because it reads and indexes the raw JSONL files on its own schedule.

Session data loss should be a P0 issue. These are hours of developer work encoded in those sessions.

Title: /resume does not show old sessions after update to v2.1.50

Body:
After updating Claude Code, all sessions created before the update are no longer visible in /resume. The session
files still exist on disk at ~/.claude/projects/ but do not appear in the session list. Updated from version "2.0.23" to 2.1.49 and then on to 2.1.50.

• Claude Code version: 2.1.50
• OS: WSL2 (Ubuntu on Windows)
• Sessions on disk: 30+
• Sessions visible in /resume: 2-3 (only ones created after the update)

The old sessions appear to have been created with a different format. This appears to be a known regression. I
found references to similar issues in #25729, #25032, and #26123.

Please provide a migration path for old session files or fix the /resume session loader to handle both old and new
formats.

Closing for now — inactive for too long. Please open a new issue if this is still relevant.

This issue has been automatically locked since it was closed and has not had any activity for 7 days. If you're experiencing a similar issue, please file a new issue and reference this one if it's relevant.