[BUG] NEed an ability to rename the claude code sessions
Status Fixed / completed
Maintainer reply None cached
Workaround ✓ Mentioned in description ↑
Activity 9 comments · opened Jul 16, 2025 · closed Jan 21, 2026
Environment
- Platform (select one):
- [x] Anthropic API
- [ ] AWS Bedrock
- [ ] Google Vertex AI
- [ ] Other: <!-- specify -->
- Claude CLI version: 1.0.53 (Claude Code)
- Operating System: macOS 15.5
- Terminal: iTerm2 / MAc Terminal
Bug Description
Currently, once resumed, a session gets a very generic name in the "claude --resume" list. Currently, we don't have a way to explicitly rename the session, but for new sessions, there's a partial workaround, that name gets decided by the first question. Ideally, we should be able to name a session, so that resuming itis eariser, instead of going of hit and trial. But the resumed session overwriting that name makes it harder, even without this feature.
Steps to Reproduce
- Start a session, do some work and close it.
- Resume it (for now, it has somewhat sensible name in the "--resume" list), and then close it again.
- Close it again, and then try to resume. All the sessions that go through this flow, end up with a generic "This session is being continued from a previous conversation..." name.
- Even timestamp doesn't help, if there were multiple sessions resumed around the same time. (very common, when resuming work after a system or IDE restart)
Expected Behaviour
- We should persist the session name, even after resume.
- Even better, we should either have a way to explicitly give a name to a session (which persists across resuming)
Actual Behavior
Session names are lost after resume.
Additional Context
<!-- Add any other context about the problem here, such as screenshots, logs, etc. -->
9 Comments
Perhaps renaming is not exactly what we need... I find that as conversations progress, the context can and does change, but you do want Claude to continue having some of that context.
Having to remember the original name, and/or having to continually rename conversations isn't a great experience either - the essence of the problem is that we want is a better way to quickly visualize the context that that session has. Just my 2 cents.
resuming sessions when you are working on several at the same time is pretty hard.
/rename-sessionis the clear solution, and it should be possible to do this repeatedly as the focus of the session changesI was about to type up an issue, but I see I'm not the only one frustrated by this. Adding my thoughts to the conversation:
/resumebehavior is almost there, but falls short.For instance, this is what
claude --resumeor/resumeshow me:There are over a hundred more entries below that. There are more duplicate summaries than not, and the summaries are useless more often than not. For instance,
This session is being continued from a previo...tells me absolutely nothing about the session, and I have no idea whereDebugging Python Web Scraper with Selenium and BeautifulSoupis coming from - none of my conversations in this project have anything to do with web scrapers or selenium in the slightest. It's either a hallucination or a bad default.In many cases,
This session is being continued from a previo...replaces the summary of a conversation, erasing any useful context that might have been in the summary before the conversation was resumed.Improving the summary content and how/when it updates would dramatically improve usability, however I think the ideal would be for claude to automatically generate a unique and memorable conversation names like
my-project-bananaand to allow the user to manually rename them. The name would be displayed in the list in addition to, not instead of, the summary.Something like the below would be ideal call patterns:
There is prior art; tmux and zellij both generate a session name automatically, and users can rename them. Many users opt for programmatic renaming and include useful context such as the current project directory, the git branch if present, and sometimes a random memorable suffix (like
banana,giraffe, etc).This is related to https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/2033 but is not a duplicate because that issue is only asking to show an identifier on the conversation picker.
Currently, this missing feature requires me to always keep VS Code instances open, just because I know, that I can not find my previous sessions. It would be so great to have an option to either "mark" sessions or make it possible to rename, since the noise of the auto-generated names make it almost impossible to find anything.
Of course, it would also be an option if the auto-generated session names would actually get any useful session names. This problem basically shows up as soon as you start using
claude -cto _split_ a conversation (what I do often, to avoid context bloat. Maybe I am doing this wrong).@baba43 : This was the exact reason why I created this issue. I have been working on a few projects in parallel, and some sessions have really good context. I have to keep them open till I can conclude them. (which is difficult, because life happens, and you can't always get back to side-projects every day)
It goes on till my MacBook starts throwing beach balls everywhere, and I HAVE TO restart the IDE or the system. And boom, all the sessions are gone. The "--resume" shows me a different order of sessions in different tabs of the same folder (god knows why it can't be the same order), and I have to try and resume sessions with generic names (mostly "This session is being continued from a previous ...")
I am not sure how useful any autogenerated session names can be. They should exist, but there should definitely be a way to rename the sessions with custom strings, so that I can come back and resume them later on.
Without this, I have 3-4 days of great productivity. But then it takes 1-2 days to reach the same level of context and hence, productivity. with "some new, some resumed" sessions.
I wonder why this was not something that came with the session resume feature to begin with. Without this, the resume feature is not very useful. (the way things are, we resume "what" exactly?)
+1
Scrolling through 20+ sessions all named "This session is being continued from a previous conversation that ran out of context. The conver…" trying to find the right one is painful. Even a simple /rename command would be a game-changer.
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fyi: Testing on the latest version (January 2026) - custom names set via
/renamenow persist through compaction and resume correctly. Sessions are properly grouped under the custom name inclaude -r, with the compacted continuation showing the same name as the original.This issue has been automatically locked since it was closed and has not had any activity for 7 days. If you're experiencing a similar issue, please file a new issue and reference this one if it's relevant.