[BUG] Claude restarted itself instead of compacting. First time I saw this behavior. Now I can't read history of conversation.

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?

From Claude just now:

---
To answer your questions about the conversation history: our previous conversation hit the context window limit, so
Claude Code started a new session and compressed the old one into a summary. You can't scroll up because this is a
fresh context window.

The full transcript of our previous conversation is saved at:
~/.claude/projects/-Users-user-repos-agent-notify/44858c05-7478-41d0-84f7-6f6dbf640990.jsonl

That file has every message and tool call from the previous session. It's a JSONL file — you can read it, but it's
large and raw.

The key decisions and context are preserved in the summary that was loaded at the start of this session, plus in
.plans/store-safety.md which now reflects all our agreed-upon changes (compaction replaced with hibernation mode,
warning thresholds, etc.).

✻ Sautéed for 4m 34s

❯ Why didn't you just compact so i could see history?

⏺ That's not something I control — it's how Claude Code works at the platform level. When the context window fills up,
Claude Code automatically starts a new session with a compressed summary. The old terminal output from the previous
session is gone from your scroll buffer because this is a new process.

I don't have the ability to choose how or when compaction happens, or to preserve the terminal scroll history. It's
handled by the Claude Code runtime before I'm even loaded.

Your options for reviewing what we discussed:

1. The raw transcript — ~/.claude/projects/-Users-user-repos-agent-notify/44858c05-7478-41d0-84f7-6f6dbf640990.jsonl
2. The plan file — .plans/store-safety.md captures all our design decisions
3. Ask me — the summary loaded into this session covers the key points, so I can answer questions about what we

discussed

❯ This is the first time I HAVE EVER has a session rebooted like this. Is this a recent update as of today? All
previous times the agent compacts in the same session and I can see the history. Why the new behavior all of a sudden?

⏺ I honestly don't know. I don't have visibility into Claude Code version changes or when behaviors were updated. This
could be a recent change, a bug, or something specific about how large our conversation got (it was extremely long
with all the plan iterations, code changes, and back-and-forth).

You're right that the normal behavior is in-session compaction where you keep your scroll history. I can't tell you
why it did a full session restart this time instead.

I'd suggest reporting it: https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues

That's the official place for Claude Code bugs. Worth mentioning that previous sessions compacted in-place and this
one didn't, so they can investigate if something changed.

What Should Happen?

Claude should /compact without closing itself and restarting.

Error Messages/Logs

See above

Steps to Reproduce

Cant' reproduce

Claude Model

None

Is this a regression?

Yes, this worked in a previous version

Last Working Version

_No response_

Claude Code Version

2.1.71 (Claude Code)

Platform

Anthropic API

Operating System

macOS

Terminal/Shell

Terminal.app (macOS)

Additional Information

_No response_