Show friendly message when opening sessions created by another client
Status Open
Maintainer reply None cached
Activity 0 comments · opened Sep 4, 2026
Description
Sessions are shared across Claude Code clients (CLI, VSCode extension, Desktop app, Web) via ~/.claude/, so they all appear in the session list regardless of where they were created. However, when you try to open a session that was created by a different client, you get a cryptic error:
Error: Query closed before response received
This gives no indication of what went wrong.
Expected behavior
Instead of an error, show a clear message like:
"This session was created in [Desktop/CLI/Web] and cannot be opened here."
Or hide/gray-out sessions that aren't compatible with the current client.
Steps to reproduce
- Create a session in Claude Desktop app
- Open Claude Code in VSCode extension (or vice versa)
- Find the session in the session list and try to open it
- Observe the error message
Environment
- macOS Darwin 25.6.0
- Claude Code VSCode extension
- Sessions originally created in Claude Desktop app