Ambiguous 'Don't ask me again' option in session resume prompt
Description
When resuming a long session, Claude Code shows this prompt:
This session is 11h 58m old and 607.6k tokens.
Resuming the full session will consume a substantial portion of your usage limits. We recommend resuming from a summary.
❯ 1. Resume from summary (recommended)
2. Resume full session as-is
3. Don't ask me againThe third option, "Don't ask me again", is ambiguous. It does not specify which of the first two behaviors (resume from summary vs. resume full session as-is) will become the new default for future sessions.
A user picking option 3 has no way to know whether they're locking in option 1 or option 2 — they're effectively making a decision without knowing which decision they're making.
Suggested fix
Allow the user to choose either option 1 or option 2 as the default when suppressing the prompt. A few possible shapes:
Option A — split the "don't ask again" into two explicit choices:
❯ 1. Resume from summary (recommended)
2. Resume full session as-is
3. Always resume from summary (don't ask again)
4. Always resume full session (don't ask again)Option B — two-step prompt: first the user picks 1 or 2, then a follow-up checkbox "Remember this choice and don't ask again".
Option C — modifier on the highlighted option: pressing a key (e.g. Shift+Enter) on option 1 or 2 selects it AND remembers it as the default.
Environment
- Claude Code CLI
- Triggered when resuming a session that has aged past some threshold (this session was 11h 58m old / 607.6k tokens)
Showing cached comments. Read the full discussion on GitHub ↗
7 Comments
Same question
I'm too anxious to select do not ask again for the same reason, and I really, really don't like compacting...
Yes same issue
It also makes the feature hard to trust. When a prompt changes future behavior permanently, the chosen default should always be explicit.
Adding a concrete use case: I always want option 2 (resume full session as-is), every time. Today there is no way to express that — the "Don't ask me again" option can't be trusted because it doesn't say which behavior it locks in, so I end up answering the prompt manually on every resume.
Beyond fixing the prompt's ambiguity (any of the suggested shapes above would work), I'd like an explicit, inspectable setting so the default is configurable and discoverable outside the TUI — e.g. a
settings.jsonkey:That would make the prompt's "don't ask again" a visible, editable choice (and recoverable if you pick the wrong one), rather than a hidden one-way flag.
If a config setting is considered out of scope for this issue (which is primarily about the prompt UX), happy to open a separate feature request for it.
In case anyone is still anxious, I clicked the wrong option since they added this horrible mouse support that makes it impossible to multi task safely.
Don't ask me again=full load, no compactIt persists
resumeReturnDismissed: truein~/.claude.json. From my research, it triggers if last message ≥ 70 min ago, and ≥ 100k estimated tokens. Both thresholds are env-overridable (CLAUDE_CODE_RESUME_THRESHOLD_MINUTES,CLAUDE_CODE_RESUME_TOKEN_THRESHOLD).Thank you for sharing this!
And yes, the new interactive mode totally ruined the CLI experience for me too. Mouse misclick disasters, also select to copy-paste is horrible hard and unreliable. You can disable interactive mode to get back the previous behavior.