Desktop sidebar shows no chats after update — JS ReferenceError crashes sidebar

Environment

• Claude Desktop: 1.8555.0
• Claude Code (embedded): 2.1.146
• macOS: Darwin 25.4.0 (Sequoia)
• Working directory: contains Cyrillic characters (non-ASCII path)

Problem

After updating Claude Desktop to 1.8555.0, the left sidebar shows zero chats. All local session data is intact on disk:

• 82 local_*.json files in ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude-code-sessions/<install-id>/<org-id>/
• 216 .jsonl session files in ~/.claude/projects/

The sidebar is completely empty — no sessions render at all.

Error in logs

~/Library/Logs/Claude/claude.ai-web.log shows this error repeatedly (every 5–10 minutes):

[error] Uncaught (in promise) ReferenceError: Cannot access '$n' before initialization

The error originates from the JS bundle served by assets-proxy.anthropic.com (e.g. ccc72bfa9-RPf51-dN.js).

What was tried (none of these fix it)

1. Multiple full restarts (Cmd+Q → reopen)
2. Cmd+Shift+R (hard reload inside Desktop)
3. Deleting Cache/Cache_Data/ and Code Cache/ directories → Desktop downloads fresh bundle → same error
4. Verified all local_*.json sidebar index files exist and contain valid JSON
5. Verified all .jsonl CLI session files are intact and parseable

The $n ReferenceError persists even with a completely fresh cache — it comes from the current CDN bundle, not stale local files.

Workaround

CLI claude --resume works correctly and can access all sessions. The data is not lost — only the Desktop sidebar UI fails to render.

Expected behavior

The left sidebar should display all local Claude Code sessions after launch.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code