[FEATURE] Resume Any Claude Session in the CLI

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

The CLI is an island. Sessions that start there stay there, and sessions that start anywhere else (mobile, web, another machine) can't come into it. If I sketch out an approach on my phone, there's no way to pull that context into a CLI session when I sit down to implement it without copy-pasting or re-explaining everything from scratch.

This feels inconsistent given that mobile and web sessions already persist server-side against my account. The storage half of the problem is largely solved for those clients. The CLI seems as if it is just not participating in that ecosystem yet.

The /desktop command gets close by routing CLI sessions to the cloud, but requires the Desktop app as a mandatory intermediary. For terminal-first developers and those on platforms where the Desktop app is not officially supported (Linux, headless servers, CI/CD), that path is unavailable or undesirable.

Proposed Solution

Store CLI sessions server-side when authenticated via claude auth login, and allow any session (regardless of which client started it) to be loaded as read-only context into a new local CLI session:

# List sessions across all clients
claude --list-sessions

# Resume any session by ID (CLI, mobile, web, or another machine)
claude --resume <session-id>

The previous transcript loads as read-only context. Everything after that executes locally on the current machine, initiated by the user. The security profile is identical to any other CLI session: no tunnel, no inbound connection, no persistent execution channel. The only thing that travels over the network is text.

This also covers the inverse: CLI sessions stored server-side would appear in the claude.ai web and mobile interfaces alongside regular chats, making any session resumable from any client in either direction.

Session flow today vs what this proposes

| Client | To account | From account |
|---|---|---|
| Mobile app | works today | works today |
| Web interface | works today | works today |
| Desktop app | works today (via /desktop) | works today (via /desktop) |
| CLI | requested | requested |

Alternative Solutions

The following existing solutions were considered but don't fully cover this use case:

_Remote Control_
Requires the source machine to be on, awake, and the terminal open. It's useful for live hand-offs but can't resume a session that has already ended, and it opens an execution channel that feels like more exposure than simply reading prior context warrants.

_Dispatch_
Routes tasks from mobile through the Desktop app for local execution. It requires adopting the Desktop app as a dependency, which doesn't fit a terminal-first workflow, and involves remote execution rather than simply loading prior context.

_--resume with a local session ID_
Only resolves against the local filesystem, so it's limited to the same machine.

Priority

Medium - Would be very helpful

Feature Category

CLI commands and flags

Use Case Example

I'm commuting and use the mobile app to think through an architectural approach with Claude. I ask questions, sketch out options, and arrive at a plan. When I get to my desk I open the CLI in my project directory and want to continue from that conversation directly, with Claude already knowing the context, without pasting anything or re-explaining the decision.

Alternatively: I'm mid-session in the CLI, close my laptop, and pick up my phone. I just want to re-read what we were working on to think it through. Right now that's not possible without having set up Remote Control in advance.

Additional Context

There's a decent amount of interest in this problem space, which I hope strengthens the case for tackling it. The issues below each approach it from a slightly different angle. However, this proposal tries to find the narrowest path that covers the widest set of clients, specifically the combination of mobile and web as session sources for CLI resumption, without requiring the Desktop app or an execution-capable relay.

Several related issues have been marked stale or closed. This proposal takes a narrower approach in the hope that a smaller, more clearly scoped ask is easier to prioritize

Open

• #24145 — bidirectional real-time sync between CLI and Web
• #41945 — session history not accessible across VS Code, web, and mobile
• #17682 — cross-environment conversation history sync
• #18645 — cross-machine portability via session export and import (status unconfirmed at time of writing)

Stale

• #31992 — CLI-to-CLI cross-machine session resume (closest overlap)
• #15962 — bi-directional context sync between Desktop and Terminal
• #28791 — sync conversation history between CLI and Desktop

Closed

• #10793 — conversation continuity across Desktop, Web, and Code

Thank you for the consideration!

Jake