[BUG] Active sessions missing from sidebar + memory/session persistence unreliable

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?

Multiple critical session persistence issues in Claude Code Desktop (Windows 11):

1. Active session missing from sidebar
The current active conversation does not appear in the left panel session list. The session transcript exists on disk (.claude/projects/.../d8d51227...jsonl, 269KB+) and the session file exists in .claude/sessions/139280.json with correct metadata including "kind":"interactive" and "entrypoint":"claude-desktop", but the UI does not display it in the sidebar.

2. Entire conversations lost between sessions
Full working sessions (including tool configurations, architecture decisions, and integration work) are completely lost when closing and reopening Claude Code. The built-in auto-memory system does not reliably persist critical context. Memory files written during sessions are not consistently available in subsequent sessions.

3. User forced to build extensive workarounds
To achieve basic session continuity, I had to manually:

• Create SessionEnd and PreCompact hooks to backup transcripts
• Write CLAUDE.md files with explicit instructions forcing memory saves
• Set up an external memory backend (Obsidian vault via MCP) as the primary memory store
• Migrate all memories to an external system because the built-in one is unreliable

This took approximately two weeks of configuration and debugging — time that should have been spent on actual work.

Related issues:

• #14227 — Feature Request: Persistent Memory Between Sessions
• #38459 — Memory files and conversation history lost between sessions
• #12908 — Conversation History disappeared after update
• #14868 — /memory shortcut no longer saves to CLAUDE.md

What Should Happen?

1. Active sessions should always appear in the sidebar — if the transcript file exists on disk and the session is active, it must be visible in the UI
2. Memory saved during a session should reliably persist to the next session without requiring user-built workarounds
3. Session continuity should work out of the box — users should not need to engineer backup hooks, external memory backends, or custom CLAUDE.md instructions just to maintain basic context between conversations
4. Previous sessions should be resumable from the sidebar with their full context intact

Error Messages/Logs

Steps to Reproduce

Bug 1: Active session not in sidebar

1. Open Claude Code Desktop on Windows 11
2. Start a conversation and work through multiple tool calls
3. Observe the left sidebar — the active session does not appear in the session list
4. Verify the transcript exists on disk: ls -lt ~/.claude/projects/<project>/*.jsonl shows the active session file growing
5. Verify session metadata exists: cat ~/.claude/sessions/<pid>.json shows correct session data

Bug 2: Memory loss between sessions

1. Have a conversation where significant decisions are made (tool configurations, architecture choices, etc.)
2. Close Claude Code
3. Reopen Claude Code and start a new session
4. The previous session's context is gone — auto-memory did not persist the key information
5. The previous session may also be missing from the sidebar entirely

Claude Model

Opus

Is this a regression?

I don't know

Last Working Version

_No response_

Claude Code Version

1.1.9493.0 (Claude Desktop, Windows)

Platform

Anthropic API

Operating System

Windows

Terminal/Shell

Windows Terminal

Additional Information

This is not an edge case — it's a fundamental workflow blocker. The community has built multiple third-party tools (claude-mem, claude-code-memory, custom MCP memory servers) specifically to work around these persistence failures, which indicates the built-in system is not meeting basic user expectations.

Session persistence and memory continuity should be default behavior that works reliably out of the box, not something users need to engineer custom solutions for.