VS Code extension can't find sessions on mapped network drives (realpath resolves to UNC)
Resolved 💬 12 comments Opened Mar 11, 2026 by wjwilson Closed Apr 30, 2026
Problem
On Windows, when the project lives on a mapped network drive (e.g. U:\projects\my-app), the VS Code extension's listSessions() returns no results because:
- The CLI creates session
.jsonlfiles in~/.claude/projects/u--projects-my-app/(encoded from the drive letter path) - The VS Code extension calls
fs.realpath()which resolves the mapped drive to its UNC path (\fileserver.example.com\share\projects\my-app) - The UNC path encodes to a completely different directory name (
--fileserver-example-com-share-projects-my-app) - No sessions are found ÔÇö the sidebar is empty after every restart
Impact
- All sessions created in VS Code disappear on restart
- Sessions created in the terminal CLI are never visible in VS Code
- Affects any Windows user whose workspace is on a mapped network drive (common in studios/enterprises with DFS/SMB shares)
Workaround
Create a symlink between the two directory names in ~/.claude/projects/:
mklink /D "%USERPROFILE%\.claude\projects\--fileserver-example-com-share-projects-my-app" "%USERPROFILE%\.claude\projects\u--projects-my-app"
Suggested fix
Either skip realpath() on Windows mapped drives, or normalize both the CLI and extension to use the same path before encoding the project directory name.
Environment
- Windows 10/11, Claude Code 2.1.72
- Mapped network drive (DFS/SMB)
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