[BUG] Session content permanently lost — no .jsonl, no .claude.json entry, no cache trace for 5 of 9 recent sessions

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?

Title: Session content permanently lost — no .jsonl, no .claude.json entry, no cache trace for 5 of 9 recent sessions

Summary:
5 recent Claude Code Desktop sessions with substantive work disappeared entirely. The sidebar/session list showed all 9 sessions as expected, but 5 display "No messages yet." Unlike other reported instances of this bug, this is not a UI display/indexing failure — the underlying data does not exist anywhere on disk.

Environment:

macOS, Claude Code Desktop app
SSH-based remote sessions (ssh-* project folders)

Affected sessions (all confirmed to contain real, substantive work):

ssh-0dc59a7a-c8c7-4c49-997e-1f0c3e12b191 (last active Aug 6)
ssh-2a5b0502-c4c6-494c-ade4-8b2e2503a66f (last active Aug 12)
ssh-633b6673-f50c-4472-920b-9dc69087101e (last active Aug 5)
ssh-777ca186-bef9-453e-bdaf-5e3be27e4d9e (last active Aug 6)
ssh-b7e4fc73-0505-4e60-9d34-c0c76f924a72 (last active Aug 6)

Diagnostic steps taken and results:

~/.claude/projects/ssh-*/ — the 5 affected session folders exist but are completely empty (no .jsonl file at all, not even a small/corrupted stub). The other 4 sessions have intact .jsonl files (200KB–880KB).
~/.claude.json — grepped for each of the 5 session UUIDs; zero matches. No metadata entry exists for these sessions at all.
~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude-code-sessions/ — checked the local session cache store; only contains the currently active session, none of the 5 missing UUIDs.
~/Library/Application Support/Claude/IndexedDB/ — checked for cached content; no trace of the 5 missing UUIDs beyond incidental matches from later diagnostic conversation text itself (false positive, not original session data).
No Time Machine backups available to check for a prior snapshot.

Expected behavior: Completed session work should be durably persisted to ~/.claude/projects/*.jsonl and registered in ~/.claude.json.

Actual behavior: For 5 sessions, no trace of the session exists anywhere on disk — not a display bug, but apparent total data loss with no stub, no partial write, and no metadata registration.

Impact: Loss of substantive server-administration work sessions (SSH-based Claude Code work against a production VPS) with no recovery path.

Note: This differs from known issue #54187 (data intact but UI fails to index) and #53717 (content stuck in Electron cache, never flushed) — in this case there is no cache, no stub, and no metadata trace at all for the affected sessions.

Additional issue — feedback command broken: Attempted to file this report via /bug inside Claude Code as instructed by the README, but typing /bug auto-corrects to /debug and does not open the bug report flow. Had to file manually via GitHub instead. This may be related to previously reported issues with /bug//feedback (e.g. #10905, #66201).

What Should Happen?

Expected behavior: Completed session work should be durably persisted to ~/.claude/projects/*.jsonl and registered in ~/.claude.json.

Error Messages/Logs

Steps to Reproduce

Diagnostic steps taken and results:

~/.claude/projects/ssh-*/ — the 5 affected session folders exist but are completely empty (no .jsonl file at all, not even a small/corrupted stub). The other 4 sessions have intact .jsonl files (200KB–880KB).
~/.claude.json — grepped for each of the 5 session UUIDs; zero matches. No metadata entry exists for these sessions at all.
~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude-code-sessions/ — checked the local session cache store; only contains the currently active session, none of the 5 missing UUIDs.
~/Library/Application Support/Claude/IndexedDB/ — checked for cached content; no trace of the 5 missing UUIDs beyond incidental matches from later diagnostic conversation text itself (false positive, not original session data).
No Time Machine backups available to check for a prior snapshot.

Claude Model

Sonnet (default)

Is this a regression?

Yes, this worked in a previous version

Last Working Version

_No response_

Claude Code Version

Claude 1.28929.0 (d1a6bc) 2026-08-11T18:58:06.000Z

Platform

Anthropic API

Operating System

macOS

Terminal/Shell

Terminal.app (macOS)

Additional Information

_No response_