[BUG] Extension update discards the active session but keeps 17 stale ones

Preflight Checklist

• [x] I have searched existing issues and this hasn't been reported yet
• [x] This is a single bug report (please file separate reports for different bugs)
• [x] I am using the latest version of Claude Code

What's Wrong?

Summary

Updating the Claude Code VSCode extension (anthropic.claude-code) to 2.1.206 terminated my in-progress session while preserving 17 older, inactive sessions. Session retention across an update favors stale sessions over the active one — the opposite of what you'd want.

So 17 idle sessions (some nearly a month old) survived the update while the single session I was actively working in was dropped. I had to manually persist state beforehand to avoid losing work.

Impact

Silent loss of in-progress work on update. Retention is evidently keyed on something other than recency/activity — a 28-day-old session outranked the one in active use. The manual-checkpoint workaround defeats the point of session persistence.

Environment

• Claude Code VSCode extension anthropic.claude-code 2.1.206 (updated ~10 min ago)
• VSCode 1.128.0 (Universal), commit fc3def6, Electron 42.5.0, Chromium 148, Node 24.17.0
• macOS (Darwin arm64 24.6.0)

What Should Happen?

Across an extension update, the active/in-progress session should be the most protected — restored first, and never dropped before older idle sessions. Retention should be keyed on recency and activity, so a session in active use is never discarded while month-old idle sessions are kept. If any pruning happens on update, the active session must survive it (or be restorable) without the user having to manually persist state beforehand.

Error Messages/Logs

Steps to Reproduce

Steps to reproduce

1. Have one active/in-progress session open alongside a backlog of idle sessions.
2. Let the VSCode extension update to 2.1.206.
3. Reload / restart as prompted.

Expected

The active session is restored first — it should be the most protected across an update, never dropped before stale sessions.

Actual

The active session was gone after the update. Meanwhile the retained session list still held every stale session:

• 2 sessions ~28 days old
• 6 sessions ~16 days old
• 9 sessions 1h–4d old

Claude Model

Opus

Is this a regression?

I don't know

Last Working Version

2.1.186

Claude Code Version

2.1.206

Platform

Anthropic API

Operating System

macOS

Terminal/Shell

VS Code integrated terminal

Additional Information

_No response_