[BUG] Chats appear as 'Temporary' when ai-title entry is missing from .jsonl session file

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?

Sessions in ~/.claude/projects/<project>/ appear as Temporary in the sidebar despite having full conversation history. This happens when the .jsonl session file has no ai-title or custom-title entry (which occurs when the app closes before title generation completes).

The sessions are not lost — the data is intact — but they're inaccessible from the UI unless you manually append a title entry to the file.

What Should Happen?

Sessions with conversation history should always be recoverable from the UI. If title generation fails or the app closes mid-session, the chat should fall back to displaying the first user message as the title instead of showing "Temporary".

Error Messages/Logs

No error messages shown. The sessions silently appear as "Temporary" in the sidebar with no indication of what went wrong.

Workaround: manually appending this line to the .jsonl file restores the session:
{"type":"ai-title","aiTitle":"Title here","sessionId":"<uuid>"}

Steps to Reproduce

1. Open Claude Code desktop on Windows
2. Start a conversation in any project
3. Close the app before the chat title is generated (within the first few seconds)
4. Reopen the app
5. The session appears as "Temporary" in the sidebar despite having conversation history

The .jsonl file exists in ~/.claude/projects/<project>/ but contains no ai-title or custom-title entry.

Claude Model

Not sure / Multiple models

Is this a regression?

Yes, this worked in a previous version

Last Working Version

_No response_

Claude Code Version

2.1.111 (Claude Code)

Platform

Anthropic API

Operating System

Windows

Terminal/Shell

PowerShell

Additional Information

This issue has multiple triggers:

1. App closes before title generation completes → no ai-title entry written
2. App closes abruptly after title is generated → title entry is lost (not flushed to disk)
3. App update → previous session titles disappear from the sidebar

In all cases the .jsonl file and conversation history survive, but the UI shows the session as "Temporary". This is a recurring issue on Windows — it has happened across multiple versions.