Claude Desktop slow startup — eager loading of all conversations + stale worktree validation

Summary

Claude Desktop takes 30-60+ seconds to restart because it eagerly loads all conversations, validates all git-worktrees, and synchronously reconnects all bridges on startup.

Environment

• macOS Darwin 25.1.0
• Claude Desktop (latest)
• 18GB in ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/
• launchPreviewPersistSession: true
• Active bridge connections (Cowork)
• 3 scheduled tasks (local agent mode)

What happens

1. On app launch, ALL conversations load simultaneously (not paginated)
2. git-worktrees.json contains stale entries pointing to deleted paths. App appears to validate each entry on startup.
3. Bridge connections attempt synchronous reconnection, blocking the UI
4. If bridge has queued messages (e.g., after PC restart), all messages flush at once, potentially causing ECONNRESET
5. Total startup time: 30-60s before the app is interactive

Expected behavior

• Startup in <5 seconds with lazy loading of non-active conversations
• Stale worktree entries auto-pruned (path doesn't exist → remove entry)
• Bridge reconnection async (don't block UI)
• Message queue capped to prevent flood on reconnect

Workarounds found

1. Manually clearing git-worktrees.json (echo '[]' > ~/Library/Application\ Support/Claude/git-worktrees.json) reduces startup time
2. Clearing bridge-state.json processedMessageUuids prevents message flood on restart
3. Setting launchPreviewPersistSession: false skips state restoration (but loses session context)

Suggested improvements

1. Lazy conversation loading — paginate, load only recent/pinned conversations on startup. Load older ones on scroll (virtual list).
2. Stale worktree pruning — auto-remove entries where the path no longer exists on disk instead of validating dead paths every startup.
3. Async bridge reconnection — don't block UI thread. Show "reconnecting..." state and let the user interact with local sessions immediately.
4. Bridge message queue cap — limit processedMessageUuids to 20-30 entries. Older UUIDs are unnecessary dedup tracking.
5. Session priority queue — reconnect sessions with scheduledTasks or active bridges first. Idle conversations can lazy-load.

Impact

For users with persistent agent sessions (Cowork, scheduled tasks, bridge connections), slow restarts create a painful loop: bridge gets stuck → need to restart → restart takes 60s → bridge may get stuck again on message flood. This makes the Cowork/bridge feature significantly less reliable for power users.