[FEATURE] (QoL) Option to add in .claude/settings.json to enable a default state (fresh, continue or resume) on app startup.

Preflight Checklist

• [x] I have searched existing requests and this feature hasn't been requested yet
• [x] This is a single feature request (not multiple features)

Problem Statement

In Claude Code, on Ubuntu (24.04) when the user tries to resume a conversation,
(after a time limit for example, other conditions exist also, like a power outage, a computer crash etc)
Claude always defaults to a new and fresh session instead of the previous session in the proper working path.

Proposed Solution

The user could have present a setting variable in .claude/settings.json for a chosen option to run on startup instead of writing --continue or --resume flags all the time.

A default state setting variable could enact a mecanism to bring back to a previous session state (with a specific path and a specific jsonl file etc) for Claude to resume from when started up if continue or resume options are chosen.

More solutions are in the attached md file also.

Alternative Solutions

The partial workaround I was offered was to add a code tidbit in my .bashrc (by you know who!)
But this only lazy solves part of the equation about a default startup option.

claude() {
# If user explicitly wants to start new
if [ "$1" = "--new" ]; then
shift
command claude "$@"
# If user explicitly wants to continue last session
elif [ "$1" = "-c" ] || [ "$1" = "--continue" ]; then
shift
command claude -c "$@"
# Default: open resume selector
else
command claude --resume "$@"
fi
}

But this is not useful for a stateful resume with the last used session path and location of the last .jsonl file.

Priority

Medium - Would be very helpful

Feature Category

CLI commands and flags

Use Case Example

1. The user has a session with Claude Code running in a specific project subfolder.
2. The user reaches a time limit and closes Claude and the terminal window.

3a.The user forgets to add the --resume or --continue flag when resuming his session.
3b.The user forgot the path location he was working in last session.

1. when started with --resume or --continue, Claude defauits to the user home folder and start a fresh session.
2. User has to figure out how to best resume a previous session with Claude.

Additional Context

I'm adding a condensed file that explains more in depth the context and some linked issues.

claude-code-session-management.md

a command similar what this does could be integrated for Claude to automatically look for the file pertaining to the most recent session file and then cd into the proper path (if it is included in said file) when resuming.

ls -lt ~/.claude/projects/-path-to-YourProject/*.jsonl | head -1

This has only been tested on Ubuntu although the issue might be present in other OSes.