New chat/session appears to retain prior conversation's live context (not just persistent memory)

Environment

• Claude Code 2.1.234 (VSCode extension)
• VSCode 3.17.19
• darwin/arm64

Description

User reports starting a brand-new chat session in the VSCode extension. The new session's transcript contained full live conversational content and task state from what the user says was a prior, separate conversation, including specific tool-call results and follow-on actions taken based on that earlier context.

This is distinct from Claude Code's intentional cross-session memory feature (~/.claude/projects/<project>/memory/MEMORY.md), which is designed to persist facts/preferences across sessions and is loaded via a system-reminder at conversation start. The issue here is that actual turn-by-turn conversational history/state appears to have carried over, not just recalled memory facts.

Impact

The user has no reliable way to distinguish a fresh session from a continued one, since there was no session-boundary marker visible in the transcript.

Ask

Please clarify expected behavior here, and if this is a regression, help identify what changed.