[Bug] VS Code extension: session history panel regenerates names + re-sorts on restart/update, making long-lived sessions unresumable

Environment

• Extension: anthropic.claude-code v2.1.183 (darwin-arm64)
• Host: VS Code on macOS (Darwin 25.5.0)
• CLI: Claude Code 2.1.183

Summary

In the VS Code extension, the session history panel becomes unreliable after a VS Code restart or an extension update: previously-resumable sessions get different display names and the list re-sorts, so a long-lived session that was easy to find before the restart becomes effectively impossible to locate afterward.

Details

Three compounding problems make resume hard:

1. Names regenerate / change on restart. A session I had been resuming for weeks showed up under a different label after restarting. The names appear to be derived from the session's first user prompt, so a session whose work has since evolved (e.g. it started as "file a Linear issue" but is now a multi-day feature effort) is labeled by something unrelated to its current content.

1. Sort order is not stable / not consistently most-recent-first. After a restart the ordering changes, so "scroll to the top for my latest session" doesn't work.

1. No ID-based escape hatch in the UI. /resume <session-id> is not available in the extension ("/resume isn't available in this environment."). When the panel mislabels/reorders a session, there is no way inside the extension to jump to a known session ID — the only reliable recovery is dropping to a terminal and running claude --resume <id>.

Steps to reproduce

1. Have a long-lived session in a project (one continued across several context resets over days).
2. Restart VS Code or update the extension.
3. Open the Claude Code history panel and try to find/resume that session.

Expected

• Stable, recognizable session identification across restarts/updates (e.g. last-active timestamp + a name that reflects current content, or a user-editable name).
• Stable, predictable sort (most-recently-active first).
• An in-UI way to resume by session ID when the list isn't enough.

Actual

• Display names change after restart and reflect only the first prompt.
• Sort order shifts, so the target session isn't where expected.
• No /resume <id> available in the extension; recovery requires the terminal.

Impact

Active, in-progress work becomes hard to return to precisely when it matters (after the restart that interrupted it). This happens consistently on VS Code update/restart.

Workaround

From a terminal: claude --resume <session-id> (session IDs live under ~/.claude/projects/<encoded-project-path>/*.jsonl).

Related

• #11408 (ability to name/organize sessions)
• #55745 (/resume history duplicate entries from inherited names)