Allow renaming sessions to custom titles (VS Code extension sidebar + tab headers)

Preflight Checklist

• [x] I have searched existing requests and this feature hasn't been requested yet
• [x] This is a single feature request (not multiple features)

Problem Statement

I run many concurrent, long-lived sessions in the VS Code extension — each scoped to a distinct piece of work (a feature, a bug, a subsystem). I keep returning to a session for as long as its context window has room, to benefit from the context built up over its lifetime. This is a core part of my workflow.

The problem is navigation. Session titles in the sidebar and in the editor tab headers are auto-generated from prompt text (currently the first prompt; in earlier versions it tracked the most-recent prompt). Neither does a good job of conveying what a session is for. With a dozen-plus active sessions, the auto-titles look similar, shift unexpectedly, and don't map to how I think about the work — so finding the right session to resume is slow and error-prone.

Current behavior / what's missing today

As of the extension version I'm on (2.1.179), I confirmed there's no built-in rename path:

No rename/retitle command is registered.
The extension contributes menus only for editor/title and commandPalette — there's no view/item/context entry, so the sidebar session list has no item context menu at all.
Titles are auto-derived from prompt text with no override.
The CLI's --name/-n flag lets you name a session at creation, but there's no equivalent for (a) sessions created through the VS Code UI or (b) renaming a session that already exists.

Describe alternatives you've considered

Using claude --name "..." from the CLI — only works at creation and only for CLI-launched sessions; doesn't help the UI-created or already-running sessions.
Editing persisted session metadata by hand — fragile and not viable while the extension is running.
Additional context

For users who deliberately maintain many parallel, topic-scoped sessions, custom titles would dramatically improve discoverability and make the sidebar/tab strip a usable index of in-flight work.

Proposed Solution

Implement an intuitive way to rename an existing session to an arbitrary custom title that then shows in:

the sessions sidebar list, and
the editor tab header.
Ideal triggers (any one would solve it):

Right-click → "Rename Session" on a sidebar session item
A claude-vscode.renameSession command in the Command Palette
Inline edit (e.g. F2 / double-click) on the sidebar item, matching VS Code conventions
Once set, a custom title should be sticky — it should not get overwritten by subsequent prompts the way auto-generated titles do.

Alternative Solutions

_No response_

Priority

High - Significant impact on productivity

Feature Category

Developer tools/SDK

Use Case Example

I keep 12–15 sessions open at once in the VS Code extension, each scoped to a specific piece of work — e.g. one for tuning beach-ball physics, one for a routing-table bug, one for distributed-lab networking, one for a strategy doc. I deliberately return to each session over days to reuse the context it has accumulated, rather than starting fresh.

The friction is finding the right one. The sidebar and tab headers show auto-generated titles derived from prompt text, so several sessions read almost identically (e.g. all starting "Can you help me…" or "Let's look at…"), and the titles shift as the conversation evolves. Scanning the strip to locate "the routing-bug session" means opening several before I find it.

If I could rename each session to a stable, human-chosen label — "routing bug", "beach-ball physics", "lab networking" — the sidebar and tab strip would become a usable index of my in-flight work, and resuming the right session would be instant instead of trial-and-error.

Additional Context

I will be very happy to see this feature come to fruition. thank you!