Feature request: scope `claude agents` view to current project / CWD
Problem
When running claude agents from inside a project directory, the agent session list currently shows all agentic sessions across all projects on the machine. There is no way to filter the list to the project I'm currently in.
For users who run Claude across many unrelated projects (different repos, different working directories), this makes the list unusable as a per-project task tracker. The view conflates contexts that should be kept separate.
Current behavior
cd ~/projects/foo
claude agents
# → shows sessions from ~/projects/foo, ~/projects/bar, ~/work/baz, etc., all mixed togetherDesired behavior
By default, claude agents invoked from a directory shows only sessions whose original CWD matches the current project root (or current working directory).
Optional flags to broaden the view explicitly:
claude agents --all— current behavior (every session, every project)claude agents --scope=cwd— only sessions started in the exact current directoryclaude agents --scope=project(default) — sessions whose CWD is under the current project root, detected via nearest.gitparent or similarclaude agents --scope=global— same as--all
A config key in ~/.claude/settings.json could set the default scope (agents.defaultScope: "project" | "cwd" | "global").
Why
- Each project has its own conversational context, its own goals, its own tasks. Mixing them obscures rather than informs.
- It's the natural mental model — every other dev tool that lists "open work" (VS Code recent, JetBrains projects, git status, tmux sessions) operates within a project scope by default.
- For users running 10–30 projects with concurrent Claude sessions, the global list rapidly becomes unreadable.
Related
claude --bgand the background service introduced in 2.1.139 make multi-project agent work much more practical. Per-project scoping in the agents view is the natural completion of that workflow.
Thanks for considering!
5 Comments
Update — found a partial workaround: pressing
Ctrl+Sinclaude agentstoggles sorting/grouping by directory, which brings same-folder sessions together. Useful, but the underlying need is broader UX, not just sorting.What I'd like to see in the agents view when running many parallel sessions:
~/.claude/settings.json— e.g.agents.defaultScope: "project"to start the view scoped to the current repo, expand with a keystroke.The pain isn't strictly "filter to current project" — it's that the view becomes a wall of text as soon as you run more than ~10 concurrent sessions across a few projects. Sorting alone (Ctrl+S) helps but doesn't scale; the view needs affordances to mute / focus / visually separate.
Keeping the issue open as a UX-improvement request rather than a strict scope filter.
This shipped in v2.1.141 —
claude agents --cwd <path>scopes the view to sessions whose dispatch origin is<path>or a subdirectory. Worktree-dispatched jobs are matched against their parent project (so a job running in~/projects/my-app/.claude/worktrees/foostill shows under--cwd ~/projects/my-app).Thanks for the request!
Heads-up for anyone following: v2.1.141 isn't on the public update channel yet.
Verified today:
So the
--cwdflag mentioned above can't be exercised by end users yet — bothlatestand an explicitclaude install 2.1.141fail to retrieve it. Looks like a staged rollout or the release just hasn't reached the public download server. Will retry over the next few days.Not a blocker for closing the issue — just flagging in case anyone else tries the flag right now and gets
error: unknown option '--cwd'.Update — fixed. v2.1.142 is now on the public update channel and includes
--cwd. Verified:So the rollout caught up, and the alias works as advertised. Closing the loop on my previous comment — nothing more needed here, this can stay closed.
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