Sessions silently deleted without user action

Status Open
Maintainer reply None cached
Activity 0 comments · opened Aug 20, 2026

Description

Named sessions are being silently deleted from ~/.claude/projects/<project>/ without any user action. The .jsonl files and their associated subdirectories are completely removed — not moved to Trash, no backup available.

Steps to Reproduce

  1. Create and name multiple sessions (/name hardware-tokens, etc.)
  2. Use them over days/weeks
  3. Run claude -r to resume — some previously named sessions no longer appear
  4. Confirm files are gone from ~/.claude/projects/<encoded-path>/

Expected Behavior

Sessions should only be deleted when the user explicitly deletes them (e.g., via /delete or manual removal).

Actual Behavior

Sessions disappear without any user action. In my case, at least 3 session files were deleted between conversations:

  • 9fa305c6-6fc8-4454-ae45-26221770a976.jsonl
  • a1eb610b-4d4d-4f08-8c28-34422aa42324.jsonl
  • c4923c50-c490-425a-be7a-7379ea16d3a5.jsonl

One of these was a named session ("hardware-tokens") with significant conversation history.

Environment

  • macOS (Darwin 25.6.0)
  • Claude Code CLI v2.1.236
  • Files are not in macOS Trash
  • No Time Machine local snapshots available
  • No other process or cron job managing these files

Impact

Loss of session history and context for long-running workstreams. Named sessions are used to maintain continuity across days/weeks of work.

View original on GitHub ↗