Folder Renaming

It happens on Mac too

Description

When a project folder is renamed or moved, the desktop app shows:

"Working directory no longer exists: /old/path. The folder may have been moved, deleted, or unmounted."

There is no way to recover from this screen without either renaming the folder back or creating a symlink at the old path.

Steps to reproduce

1. Open a project in the Claude Code desktop app
2. Rename or move the project folder in Finder/Explorer
3. Return to the desktop app

Expected behavior

The app should offer a folder picker to repoint the session to the new location, similar to how most IDEs handle this (VS Code, Xcode, etc.).

Actual behavior

Dead-end error screen. The "Open folder" button (if present) does not help — it repeats the same error.

Workaround

Create a symlink at the old path:
ln -s /new/path /old/path

Platform

• macOS 15.x
• Claude Code desktop app

Same experience on macOS with a Google-Drive-synced folder — renaming it orphans every existing desktop-app chat in that folder ("Session not found on disk"), and the only reliable recovery I've found is renaming the folder back. I now avoid renaming or moving project folders entirely, which means stale names and folder bloat over time. +1 for making sessions survive a rename.

Confirming this reproduces on Linux (Ubuntu 22.04) with the VS Code extension as well — not just Windows/Desktop — so it looks like core path-handling behavior rather than a desktop-app-only issue.

Repro:

1. Open Claude Code in a folder, e.g. /home/user/projects/myproject.
2. Rename that folder (via the shell, the OS file manager, or by asking Claude to mv it), e.g. to myproject-old.
3. The session immediately fails with:

``
Error: Claude Code returned an error result: Path "/home/user/projects/myproject" does not exist
View output logs · Troubleshooting resources
``

1. Renaming the folder back to the original name restores the session.

VS Code extension version 2.1.214. The working directory appears to be pinned as a path string and hard-checked for existence each turn, so any rename/move breaks the session until the original name is restored. The project's memory/history (also keyed to the encoded path under ~/.claude/projects/<encoded-path>/) is likewise orphaned when reopening at the new path.

\#79215 describes the ideal fix (sessions following a renamed/moved folder / persistent project identity).

You shouldn't need to rename the folder back permanently if the transcript files are still under ~/.claude/projects/. I've repaired this same path split by changing the stored project path rather than moving or rebuilding the session.

Check one affected session first. Find its transcript file under ~/.claude/projects/<project-slug>/, then open the matching metadata file under ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude-code-sessions/ and inspect its cwd. If that still names the old folder, the conversation history is intact and the metadata is simply pointing at a path that no longer exists.

I built rewrite_metadata_cwd.py in BasedGPT/claude-code-session-recovery for this case. Run diagnose.py from the same toolkit first; it maps the metadata and transcript files and gives you a diagnosis ID. Then rewrite_metadata_cwd.py can replace the old path with the new one in dry-run mode so you can review every proposed change before using --apply. Quit Claude Desktop fully before applying it, since the app can write its in-memory metadata back over an external edit.

This addresses the stored file path after a move. It won't make the app follow future folder renames automatically, but it should remove the dead-end screen without leaving a permanent symlink behind.

Hope this helps, if my tools are able to help you, would appreciate a ⭐ :)