[FEATURE] Desktop app sidebar should show CLI-created sessions

Preflight Checklist

• [x] I have searched existing requests and this feature hasn't been requested yet
• [x] This is a single feature request (not multiple features)

Problem Statement

Sessions created via the CLI (claude command in terminal) do not appear in the Claude Code desktop app's left sidebar. The desktop app only shows sessions created within the app itself.

• CLI sessions are stored in ~/.claude/projects/{project}/ (I have 437 session files)
• Desktop app sessions are stored in AppData/Roaming/Claude/claude-code-sessions/ (only 1 session)
• The desktop app sidebar only reads from its own session store, so CLI sessions are invisible

This means I lose access to all my previous work history when switching between CLI and desktop app.

Proposed Solution

Unify the session store so that the desktop app's left sidebar shows all sessions for a given project, regardless of whether they were created via CLI or the desktop app.

Both CLI and desktop already share the same ~/.claude/ config directory for settings, memory, and project instructions. Sessions should also be unified.

At minimum, the desktop app should be able to read and display/resume sessions from ~/.claude/projects/{project}/.

Alternative Solutions

Using /resume in the CLI to access past sessions, but this doesn't help when working in the desktop app where the sidebar is the primary navigation.

Priority

Critical - Blocking my work

Feature Category

CLI commands and flags

Use Case Example

I use both the CLI and desktop app depending on the task. After weeks of heavy CLI usage (437 sessions), I switched to the desktop app and the sidebar was empty — all my session history was gone. The data exists on disk but the desktop app can't see it.

Additional Context

• Claude Code version: 2.1.87
• OS: Windows 10
• CLI sessions path: ~/.claude/projects/G--workspace/ (437 .jsonl files)
• Desktop sessions path: AppData/Roaming/Claude/claude-code-sessions/ (1 session)