Session state export/import — portable opaque session snapshots

Use case

Long-running sessions accumulate valuable context: reasoning chains, domain understanding, problem-solving approach, working memory. When a session ends (timeout, machine reboot, context limit), this context is lost. Resuming starts from a degraded state — the facts may be recoverable from tools, but the reasoning character is gone.

Proposed solution

Allow users to save and restore session state as an opaque, encrypted blob:

• claude session save [session-id] > session.blob — exports current session state
• claude session load session.blob — restores a session from a saved snapshot

The blob format is Anthropic's internal concern — opaque to users, encrypted, versioned as needed. Users don't parse it. They store it and hand it back.

Storage model

Users manage their own persistence:

• Download the blob to local storage, S3, or any backup system
• Restore when needed — same machine, different machine, doesn't matter
• Blobs that are never restored cost Anthropic nothing

This naturally creates a storage tier opportunity: users who want Anthropic to store blobs long-term can pay for it. Users who manage their own storage (power users, enterprise with their own backup infrastructure) export and manage locally.

Why this matters

Persistent agents are the next frontier. An agent that accumulates domain expertise over weeks is exponentially more valuable than one that starts from zero every session. But persistence requires storage, and storage has costs. This design puts the storage cost on the user who values the persistence, not on Anthropic's infrastructure budget.

Enterprise customers with fleets of specialized agents would pay for managed persistence. Individual users would self-manage. Both get the primitive.

What this is NOT

• Not a conversation history export (that's a different feature)
• Not a human-readable format (opaque blob, Anthropic's schema)
• Not a way to transfer sessions between accounts (encrypted to the account)