Resume shows only partial conversation history due to stale sessions-index.json

Status Fixed / completed

Maintainer reply None cached

Activity 6 comments · opened Jan 30, 2026 · closed Aug 19, 2026

Description

When using --resume to resume a conversation, only a few recent messages appear instead of the full conversation history. The conversation data file contains the complete history, but sessions-index.json has incorrect/stale metadata.

Steps to Reproduce

Have a long conversation with many messages
Exit the session
Resume with claude --resume and select the conversation
Only the last few messages appear, earlier conversation history is missing

Investigation Findings

Examined the conversation files in ~/.claude/projects/<project>/:

Conversation file (*.jsonl): Contains 1480 lines with 678 user messages and 741 assistant messages
sessions-index.json: Shows messageCount: 3 and has incorrect firstPrompt

Example discrepancy:

Actual first message: "i want to run a detailed security review on this code base..."
sessions-index.json firstPrompt: "i want you to create a html file that look like a ppt..."

The firstPrompt in the index corresponds to a message from much later in the conversation, and messageCount is drastically underreported.

Expected Behaviour

sessions-index.json should accurately reflect the conversation's message count and first prompt
Resume should restore the full conversation history as stored in the .jsonl file

Actual Behaviour

sessions-index.json metadata becomes stale/out of sync with actual conversation file
Resume uses the incorrect index metadata, showing only partial history
Full conversation data IS preserved in the .jsonl file but not loaded

Environment

macOS (Darwin 24.6.0)
Issue occurred on multiple separate conversations

Workaround

The conversation data is intact. Deleting sessions-index.json may force a rebuild, though this hasn't been tested.

View original on GitHub ↗

5 Comments

github-actions[bot] · 7 months ago

Found 3 possible duplicate issues:

This issue will be automatically closed as a duplicate in 3 days.

If your issue is a duplicate, please close it and 👍 the existing issue instead
To prevent auto-closure, add a comment or 👎 this comment

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

tamasarpad · 7 months ago

Found 3 possible duplicate issues: 1. [[BUG] /resume index suddenly missing 80% of sessions #21610](https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/21610) 2. [[BUG] Past conversations not showing in dropdown - sessions-index.json not being updated. #18619](https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/18619) 3. [[BUG] Sessions index has wrong path information #20102](https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/20102) This issue will be automatically closed as a duplicate in 3 days. If your issue is a duplicate, please close it and 👍 the existing issue instead To prevent auto-closure, add a comment or 👎 this comment 🤖 Generated with Claude Code

Those are about session's not showing up to resume. This is about messages/context missing from a resumed conversation.

shovel-kun · 7 months ago

Occurs on Arch Linux too

qubitcontracting · 6 months ago

Quick check to verify you have this bug:

Linux/macOS/WSL:

LATEST_INDEX=$(ls -t ~/.claude/projects/*/sessions-index.json | head -1)
echo "Index: $(jq '.entries[0].messageCount' "$LATEST_INDEX")"
echo "Actual: $(wc -l < $(ls -t ~/.claude/projects/*/*.jsonl | head -1))"

Windows PowerShell:

$latestIndex = Get-ChildItem "$env:USERPROFILE\.claude\projects\*\sessions-index.json" | Sort-Object LastWriteTime -Descending | Select-Object -First 1
$idx = (Get-Content $latestIndex.FullName | ConvertFrom-Json).entries[0].messageCount
$actual = (Get-ChildItem "$env:USERPROFILE\.claude\projects\*\*.jsonl" | Sort-Object LastWriteTime -Descending | Select-Object -First 1 | Get-Content).Count
Write-Host "Index: $idx  Actual: $actual"

If Index is much lower than Actual, you have this bug.

---

Confirming across 4 machines (all v2.1.29):

Linux (Ubuntu 25.10): Index 4 msgs, Actual 886 lines
WSL2 (Ubuntu 25.10): Index 13 msgs, Actual 4,885 lines
macOS 26.2 (Build 25C56): Index 2 msgs, Actual 29,048 lines
Windows 11 Pro (Build 26200): Index 6 msgs, Actual 55 lines

---

Workaround: Create a SessionEnd hook that updates sessions-index.json on exit.

The fix needs to:

Find the most recent .jsonl session file in each project
Update the matching entry in sessions-index.json with:

messageCount = line count of the session file
fileMtime = file modification time in milliseconds since epoch
modified = current UTC timestamp in ISO format

You can ask Claude Code to generate this fix for your OS by describing the above requirements.

ByTheSeaL · 6 months ago

Exact same issue here: https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/22960

Solved by deleting sessions-index.json. downgrading to 2.1..29 and relaunching with "claude /resume". I'll implement the SessionEnd hook next.

Screenshot of /resume page with bug:

And then after fix:

Same CC instance, same folder.

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