[BUG] Desktop sidebar: automatic per-project group headers cost a row per session with no way to collapse or disable them

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?

A recent update replaced the flat session list in the left sidebar with automatic
group headers, one per project. I did not create these groups and I cannot rename,
merge or remove them.

What Should Happen?

I should be able to group the sessions myself

Error Messages/Logs

Steps to Reproduce

Ten rows to list five sessions. Before the update the same five fitted in five.

The header names are also not the names I use. They appear to be derived: the
GitHub repository name when the working directory has a remote, otherwise the
directory name. Consistent from the app's point of view, confusing from mine, and not something I can correct.

And several headers are truncated
so for projects whose names share a prefix the header does not even disambiguate.

What I cannot do

• rename or merge groups (five of my projects are one product family and belong under one heading)
• turn the grouping off — there is no key for it in settings.json

Suggested fixes, cheapest first

1. Do not group when a project has only one session.

That alone removes the whole cost in my case.

1. A setting to switch the grouping off, restoring the flat recency list.
2. Longer term: user-defined groups, which is what #74141, #81914 and #82641 ask

for. Those are feature requests; this report is about the automatic grouping
that arrived without one.

Related

• #74141, #81914, #82641 — requests for custom folders/groups (different ask)
• #79134 — custom sidebar groupings vanished after an update

Claude Model

Opus

Is this a regression?

Yes, this worked in a previous version

Last Working Version

1.24012.9.0

Claude Code Version

1.24012.11.0

Platform

Anthropic API

Operating System

Windows

Terminal/Shell

Windows Terminal

Additional Information

_No response_