[URGENT][Desktop, Code tab] Working/pinned sessions get archived with no user action (Cmd+W from UI automation closes+archives mid-turn, no confirmation)

Status Open
Maintainer reply None cached
Activity 7 comments · opened Oct 3, 2026

What happened

In the Claude desktop app (Code tab), sessions I was actively using disappeared from the sidebar. They were not deleted — they had been archived, without me archiving them.

  • Two pinned sessions disappeared back to back on 2026-10-03 (last activity 17:58Z and 18:22Z). After the fact both showed pinned: false and isArchived: true.
  • A brand-new session I opened to ask about the disappearance (last activity 18:24Z) was archived as well.
  • One of the pinned sessions had already been unarchived once and was archived again shortly after.
  • Three more sessions from 2026-10-01 and 2026-10-03 were also found archived. Six in total.

What I expected

Sessions stay in the sidebar unless I archive them myself. Pinned sessions in particular should never be auto-archived.

What I checked

  • Full-text search across all session transcripts (archived included) for archive_session: 0 hits. No Claude session called the archive tool, so the archiving came from the app itself.
  • I did not archive these manually.
  • All affected sessions are local sessions with no PR attached, idle (not running) at the time.

Environment

  • Claude desktop app 2.19675.0, macOS 15.6
  • Model: claude-fable-5-1

Impact

Work in progress vanishes from the sidebar mid-use; recovering it requires knowing to look in the Archived list. It happened three times in a row within about 30 minutes.

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3 Comments

vskdoll · 11 days ago

Additional evidence from ~/Library/Logs/Claude/main.log (local time, 2026-10-04):

  • 8 archive events between 03:02 and 03:25, each logged as LocalSessions.archive: sessionId=... (the window-side call), not as an auto-archive job. grep -i auto.?archiv on the log: 0 lines.
  • Every one hit the session that was focused (open on screen) at that moment. After each archive, focus moved to the next session, and that one was archived next: 03:02:22 → 03:02:26 → 03:02:32 (three in 10 seconds).
  • At 03:22:17 a just-restored pinned session got focus; at 03:22:18 it was archived, one second later. The next focused session was archived at 03:22:22.
  • Each archive is followed by updateSession ... keys=isStarred → { isStarred: false }, so the pin is dropped as part of it.
  • I did not click Archive or intend to archive any of these. Sessions were mid-work (dev servers and previews for one of them were killed by the archive: [Preview] Process exited ... code: 143).

So something in the window is issuing archive against the open session — a shortcut or a control that fires without an explicit archive action. There is no confirmation step and a pinned session is not protected on this path.

vskdoll · 11 days ago

Narrowed down from the app bundle (2.19675.0) and the log:

  • The log line LocalSessions.archive: sessionId=… is emitted only by the window-side handler, which calls archiveSession(…, {userInitiated: true}). The auto-archive engine logs [AutoArchiveEngine] Archiving … instead (0 such lines), and agent/tool archives go through a different path with isAutomatic. So all 8 events came from the sidebar UI itself: the hover archive icon on the row, or the row's "…" menu.
  • That control archives immediately: no confirmation, pinned rows are not protected, a session with running preview servers is torn down.
  • The pattern in the log matches a list-shift cascade: the open session is archived, the list moves up, focus goes to the neighbouring session, and that one is archived a few seconds later from the same spot (03:02:22 → :26 → :32; 03:22:18 → :22). One archive came 1 second after the row was opened (03:22:17 → 03:22:18).

Request: require a confirmation (or an undo toast) for archive from the sidebar, never show the one-click archive icon on pinned rows, and do not let a click that opens a row land on the archive icon. Related: #83194, #57602, #86449.

vskdoll · 11 days ago

Correction to my previous comment: the hover-icon misclick explanation is wrong.

  • On my sidebar, hovering a session row shows only the "…" menu. There is no one-click archive icon.
  • I did not click the session rows in the sidebar or open the "…" menu at those times. The sessions were open and working.

What stands from the evidence: every event is logged as LocalSessions.archive (the window-side handler, userInitiated: true), with 0 [AutoArchiveEngine] lines and no agent archive_session call in any transcript. So the app window's own code issued "archive" for the open session with no user action, 8 times in 23 minutes, including 1 second after a restored session was reopened (03:22:17 → 03:22:18).

Same symptom as #57602 (active session archived with no user action, Windows and macOS, closed for inactivity without a fix noted) and #58446. All affected sessions here had a Remote Control bridge session attached (Requested CCR archive of 1 Remote Control bridge session(s) after each).

macOS 15.6, Claude desktop 2.19675.0, bundled Claude Code 2.1.286.

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