[FEATURE] Smart Session Rename

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

I often work on multiple projects for one company across one or more code repositories, frequently using multiple editor-based Claude sessions in the Claude extension for VS Code. I lose track of which session is which and can't figure out which editor tab to click without trial-and-error, or worse, having to read the chat content to get detailed bearings on which chat I'm looking at.

Proposed Solution: Other-Session-Aware Smart Session Rename

1) Use Claude's compaction-style titling logic

Claude does an excellent job writing a top level heading for chats every time it auto-compacts in VS Code. Using similar logic it could just apply a shortened version of that to the session title field, on compaction, on first chat response, or on demand by user.

2) Enhance title generation with other-session-awareness using metadata

What would make it really smart though, is that it could assess other ongoing chats, and decide on unique human-differentiable titles for each session and use those brief title strings, as editor tab titles.

It should maintain awareness of which chats are currently open in editor, when they were each most recently used, and which sessions have been closed, and when they were most recently used.

The combination of giving Claude awareness of other smartly-named sessions and session metadata of other sessions would allow Claude to intelligently correlate titles when appropriate if it is clear that the user is working on a similar project across multiple chat sessions. If not, and the user is simply multitasking on relatively unrelated chat sessions, Claude could just name that chat relatively independently based on its context.

Metadata examples for Claude's "Other-Session-Awareness"

• bool isOpen == true if session is open in editor
• string lastActive == a timestamp of user's last activity.
• if isOpen == false, check string user_closed timestamp to see when user closed the window. Claude is 'smart' enough to reason that a recent closure info intelligently.
• I'll leave the rest to the wonderful product people at anthropic.

Bonus sub-features:

Slash commands for renaming sessions

/autoname (forces Claude to reanalyze and rename)
/autonameactive (forces Claude to reanalyze and rename all active sessions)
/autoname 1, 3, 5-7 (rename by editor position in current editor window containing multiple Claude sessions)
/autonameall (renames all sessions or MRU 100, 500, 1000, or some anthropic-determined setting)

/autoname <instructions on how to think about it.. e.g. "bias for most recent plan we just made"> (allows user input of arguments or free form instructions without specific formatting needed)

Free-form settings file for human-worded guidance on renaming strategy & patterns

Allow user to build a autonaming.json settings file where user can include detailed free form information that Claude should always consider when naming chat sessions. ("Always include datestring in most compact format possible at front of session name.", "Always Use Title Case", "Never use title case.", etc.)

Alternative Solution: Merely "Smart Session Rename"

Just name sessions and their editor tabs by the content in the chat, updating it on compactions.

This would do the same as proposed in primary solution, but without the awareness of other chat sessions. This would make for an excellent MVP feature release.

Claude Form Answers

Priority

High - Significant impact on productivity

Feature Category

Other

Use Case Example: Multi-Session Chat Confusion (from right now)

I have 3 Claude sessions open in VS Code. They are titled:

• "you appear to have hallucinated in some previ..."
• "deep dive the commit history, code-writing an..."
• "Audit timeouts/timers in Saturday & fuel-ba..."

The tabs show:

• "you appear to have hallu..."
• "deep dive the commit history, code-writing an..."
• "Audit timeouts/timers in..."

Excellent titles by Claude

I asked Claude what the topics of the conversations were in a format that would fit on an editor tab, which it answered perfectly:

• USDA Research & Cleanup
• Refining the /commit Skill
• Timeout & Limit Audit

As you can see, the titles miss the mark most of the time. Real world, more than 2/3 of the time, the editor titles are not only useless but distracting and confusing within a workflow. They instead could be very useful.

How I'd like my tab titles

Rationale

I recall generally three things about a session to help me "remember" it.

• How long or big was it // how much time I spent in it, as a feeling.
• How long ago it happened.
• The topic, loosely.

To maximally speed my accession of cognitive awareness of what tab I'm looking at, I'd like the following syntax in naming by Claude.

First character indicating when, second character indicating size or length, a space, then a title string generated by Claude.

First character, based on WHEN it happened.

(ie. When conversation was most active (day that had the most responses by me), or more simply, the date the session started.)

• _ OR "" = today
• d = yesterday
• D = 2-6 days ago
• w = 7 days ago
• W = 7-28 days ago
• m = 28-60 days ago
• M = 60-364 days ago
• y = 365- you get the picture.

Second char, based on LENGTH/SIZE

• S = short convo, less than 25% context used
• 0 = normal conversation, no compactions
• 1 = compacted once in convo
• 2 = compacted twice in convo
• ...
• 9 = compacted 9 times in convo
• L = compacted more than 9 times in convo.

TITLE EXAMPLES

_0 post-signup-dialog-box
dL Overhaul Purchase Backend
mS formatting-claude-md

Last Claude Form Answer

Additional Context

_No response_