Idle sessions consume excessive CPU (~5% each)

Resolved 💬 3 comments Opened Apr 6, 2026 by porky11 Closed May 16, 2026

I'm a MAX subscriber and heavy Claude Code user. I regularly have 10–15 sessions open via --resume, most of them idle (waiting for my next prompt). This is a natural workflow — I keep sessions per project/task and switch between them throughout the day.

The problem: Each idle session consumes ~3–5% CPU continuously. With 10+ sessions, that's 30–50% total CPU spent doing nothing. On a laptop, this visibly drains battery life.

Measured example (Linux, all sessions idle):

13.4%  claude --resume tuner
 6.2%  claude --resume creator
 5.5%  claude --resume menu
 3.8%  claude --resume micro-party
 3.7%  claude --resume polish
 2.4%  claude --resume Ich
 2.1%  claude --resume render
 1.7%  claude --resume dadingen
 1.6%  claude --resume co

None of these sessions were actively processing — they were all waiting for input.

Expected behavior: An idle session waiting for user input should consume effectively 0% CPU. The process should sleep until woken by actual input.

Current workaround: Closing sessions I'm not actively using and re-opening them later. This works but defeats the purpose of --resume as a session management tool.

I'd love to keep using Claude Code as my primary workflow — this is the main friction point for me right now.

View original on GitHub ↗

This issue has 3 comments on GitHub. Read the full discussion on GitHub ↗