[BUG] Out of memory crash from .claude logs

Preflight Checklist

• [x] I have searched existing issues and this hasn't been reported yet
• [x] This is a single bug report (please file separate reports for different bugs)
• [x] I am using the latest version of Claude Code

What's Wrong?

Claude code was crashing on startup when accessing it from one user- this did not happen from other users.

<img width="2110" height="959" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/9f2539d4-ca7c-4912-aa1b-cdc38e7a00b7" />

Apparently, a really big .claude file can cause crashes if it runs out of RAM.

> Found the issue. The user has 4.6GB of Claude session history accumulated in ~/.claude/projects/. When Claude starts, it tries to load this data and runs out of memory (the heap limit is around 1.9GB).

> Correct, Claude Code doesn't aggressively clean up old data. Here's what was stored:

  What the data was:
  - projects/ (4.2GB) - Conversation transcripts for every session in each directory you used Claude in. Each .jsonl file is a full conversation history including all messages, tool calls, file contents read, and AI responses
  - debug/ (325MB) - Debug logs and diagnostic information

  Why it grew so large:
  - Every time Claude reads a file, that content gets stored in the session transcript
  - Long sessions with lots of file reads/edits accumulate quickly

  Does Claude clean this up?
  Not really. It keeps session history so you can resume conversations with /resume, but there's no automatic pruning of old sessions. This is arguably a bug or missing feature - accumulating 4.6GB without cleanup isn't ideal.

What Should Happen?

Clean up old sessions or error handling.

Error Messages/Logs

Steps to Reproduce

Have a huge .claude file

Claude Model

Not sure / Multiple models

Is this a regression?

Yes, this worked in a previous version

Last Working Version

_No response_

Claude Code Version

2.1.12

Platform

Anthropic API

Operating System

Ubuntu/Debian Linux

Terminal/Shell

WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux)

Additional Information

_No response_