VS Code Extension: Past Conversations not loaded after restart

Description

After restarting VS Code, the "Past Conversations" list in the Claude Code extension is empty, even though conversation transcripts are stored locally.

Evidence

Conversation data IS being persisted correctly:

Location: ~/.claude/projects/<project-path>/
Format: .jsonl files (one per conversation)
My project folder contains 300+ MB of conversation transcripts

Example:

~/.claude/projects/c--Users-vertr-Desktop-KI-Monitor-Sources-VS-Workspace-DURY-LEGAL-KI-MONITOR/
├── 0007dfc8-cbf3-4f50-b334-64c66137a693.jsonl (734 KB)
├── 00230cc5-48b2-412d-b80d-e40d822c8f9c.jsonl (86 KB)
├── ... (hundreds more)

Expected Behavior

After restarting VS Code, the extension should:

Load existing conversation transcripts from disk
Display them in the "Past Conversations" panel
Allow resuming any of the stored conversations

Current Behavior

"Past Conversations" is empty after VS Code restart
CLI workaround works: claude --continue and claude --resume can access the stored conversations
Data is NOT lost, just not displayed in the VS Code UI

Environment

OS: Windows 11
VS Code Extension: Claude Code (latest)
Storage location: C:\Users\<user>\.claude\

Suggested Enhancement

Optionally allow users to configure:

Number of past conversations to display (e.g., last 10-15)
Storage location (for users who want to use a different drive)

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

So I was having the same issue and I figured out that when Claude coat up upgraded somehow it created a new doc Claude folder and post upgrade. New conversations were being saved inside of that and it found all of my old conversations in an old dot Claude folder important to note that seems like the file that contains the history is a hidden file. I asked Claude code to merge the two instances into the current one and it fixed. It all seems good now this is the second time I've had this happen with an upgrade.

I'm still having this issue, version 2.0.73.

Same problem but apparently claude --resume works on the immediate last conversation even in the VSC extension. Comments indicate that's expected to be CLI only but it works.

I am having the same issue.

Confirming this issue on Windows 10. Troubleshooting steps taken:

VS Code updated recently; Claude Code extension is now v2.0.75, CLI is v2.0.76
After restart, VS Code extension shows empty "Past Conversations" with no UI errors
Verified conversation data exists in ~/.claude/projects/ as JSONL files (data present from about the past month only)
claude --resume CLI also only shows conversations from post-update (last ~14 hours)
LevelDB files exist in AppData\Roaming\Claude\Local Storage\leveldb dating back to July, but unclear if they contain conversation data
Extension settings contain no path configuration options

Data may still be on disk but neither VS Code extension nor CLI can currently access older conversations. CLI workaround suggests shared underlying indexing or data location issue post-update.

Same problem on Linux.
Conversations are saved, though, I can resume them in claude binary with /resume command.

@claude

@claude do you plan on fixing this issue?

Same issue on Mac Tahoe 26.2. Made Claude to record every conversation into .md file, but not ideal for quick searching through it.

Any update on this?

Any update on this?

I have had to send a pretty lengthy email to support. Not only is this issue not resolved. It was duplicating conversations in jsonl files eating tokens, crashing my hardware and while trying to clean up the mess Claude Code made I noticed personal information in jsonl files where it had apparently scanned personal files. Then after I cleaned up huge duplicate files about 300MB opened Claude Code yesterday barely used it maybe an hour and it shut me down saying I had no time left. There are some massive bugs in Code that need to be addressed.

@claude

@claude this is frustrating

@claude

@claude can you just ask claude code to fix it?

or maybe...I don't know... Gemini 3 can fix it :-) it's quite a shame that there is such a bug for a long time

+1

This is happening to me as well for version 2.0.57 and above. If I downgrade to version 2.0.56 and below the past conversations load again.

On Mac the problem was permissions. The projects are created with permissions 0700.

Changing to 0770 fixed the issue.
So I could make it work by running find ~/.claude/projects -type d -exec chmod 0770 {} \;.

Obviously this is a bandaid and fixing the root cause is still needed.

@claude

@claude So are you guys eventually going to fix this issue or do you simply not care in the slightest? This is frustrating.

@claude So are you guys eventually going to fix this issue or do you simply not care in the slightest? This is frustrating.

I wish I could show you the email correspondences with the amount of gaslighting they have given me over this issue, excessive token consumption, file storage, mangled files, security breaches(Claude Code accessed my personal files and put the information in jsonl files), hardware malfunction(BSOD) from excessive resource usage, no file cleanup mechanism after Code or Anthropic has created hundreds of erroneous files and folders that consume tokens and resources with no way of knowing which are important and the list goes on. Heads up, short of the fact they are very aware that conversation lengths are an issue, they have basically admitted all these problems are by design and well yes we've logged your complaint but hey here's the workaround for our poor design features.

If anyone wants more information of the issues I've had and/or the feedback I've received, let me know. I'm happy to share.

@DaazKu

On Mac the problem was permissions. The projects are created with permissions 0700.

Changing to 0770 fixed the issue. So I could make it work by running find ~/.claude/projects -type d -exec chmod 0770 {} \;.

Obviously this is a bandaid and fixing the root cause is still needed.

@DaazKu Thanks for the workaround. That worked for me.

@DaazKu

Adding some related findings that might help debug this issue.

I've been with a related problem (#13064 Past Conversations showing only recent sessions) and found that the VS Code dropdown reads from ~/.claude/projects/<project>/sessions-index.json, not directly from the .jsonl files.

In my case:

655 session .jsonl files exist on disk (all intact)
Only 65 entries in sessions-index.json
VS Code shows only what's in the index

For those experiencing a completely empty Past Conversations list, I'd suggest checking:

Does your sessions-index.json exist? If it's missing or corrupted, the UI has nothing to read.
Check permissions on the file: ls -la ~/.claude/projects/<your-project>/sessions-index.json

The chmod 0770 workaround from @DaazKu likely works because the VS Code extension process runs under a different effective user/group than the CLI, so it can't read the 0700 directories created by the CLI.

This also explains why claude --resume works from terminal (same user, can read 0700) but VS Code can't.

Same issue present in Claude Code for VS Code v2.1.76

I threw Claude at this and sorted out a fix by patching the vs code extension JS. Works for me on Windows 11, hopefully it works for others.

It adds a fallback path for history/session loading:

If the extension’s normal session index returns nothing, it reads session .jsonl files directly from ~/.claude/projects/<mapped-cwd>/.
If opening a specific session returns empty, it directly loads <sessionId>.jsonl.
It restores list titles from ai-title records (or first user text).
It filters loaded records to message types the UI can render.

Patch file:
~/.vscode/extensions/anthropic.claude-code-2.1.101-win32-x64/extension.js

Replace the entire listSessions() method with:

async listSessions(){let K=this.cwd,V=await zd({dir:K,includeWorktrees:!1});if(V.length===0&&typeof K==="string"&&/^[a-z]:\\/.test(K)){let q=K[0].toUpperCase()+K.slice(1);if(q!==K){let z=await zd({dir:q,includeWorktrees:!1});z.length>0&&(this.logger.warn(`listSessions path-case fallback: ${K} -> ${q} (${z.length} sessions)`),K=q,V=z)}}let B=await g1.readTeleportMetadata(K,V.map((H)=>H.sessionId)),j=V.map((H)=>{let N=B.get(H.sessionId);return{id:H.sessionId,lastModified:H.lastModified,fileSize:H.fileSize,summary:H.summary,gitBranch:H.gitBranch,worktree:UR4(H.cwd),isCurrentWorkspace:!0,...N}});if(j.length===0)try{let q=require("os"),z=require("path"),U=require("fs"),Z=typeof K==="string"?K.replace(/[\\/:]/g,"-"):String(K),D=z.join(q.homedir(),".claude","projects"),L=z.join(D,Z),O=U.existsSync(L)?U.readdirSync(L).filter((F)=>F.endsWith(".jsonl")):[],N=O.map((F)=>{let M=z.join(L,F),A=U.statSync(M),w=F.replace(/\.jsonl$/,""),I=B.get(w),R=I?.summary;if(!R)try{let E=U.readFileSync(M,"utf8").split(/\r?\n/).filter((P)=>P.trim().length>0);for(let P of E){let T;try{T=JSON.parse(P)}catch{continue}if(T?.type==="ai-title"&&typeof T.aiTitle==="string"&&T.aiTitle.trim()){R=T.aiTitle.trim();break}if(!R&&T?.type==="user"){let h=T?.message?.content;if(Array.isArray(h)){let C=h.find((c)=>c?.type==="text"&&typeof c.text==="string"&&c.text.trim());if(C){R=C.text.trim(),R.length>70&&(R=R.slice(0,67)+"...")}}}}}catch{}return{id:w,lastModified:A.mtimeMs,fileSize:A.size,summary:R||w,gitBranch:I?.gitBranch,worktree:I?.worktree,isCurrentWorkspace:!0,...I}}),x=U.existsSync(L)?O.length:-1,G=U.existsSync(D)?U.readdirSync(D,{withFileTypes:!0}).filter((F)=>F.isDirectory()).map((F)=>F.name).slice(0,30):[];this.logger.warn(`listSessions debug cwd=${K} key=${Z} projectDir=${L} projectJsonl=${x} projectsRoot=${D} knownProjectDirs=${G.join(",")}`),N.length>0&&(this.logger.warn(`listSessions file fallback used: ${N.length} sessions from ${L}`),j=N)}catch(q){this.logger.warn(`listSessions debug failed: ${q}`)}ja(j);let Y=new Set(this.settings.getHiddenSessionIds()),X=Y.size>0?j.filter((H)=>!Y.has(H.id)):j;return X.length===0&&j.length>0&&(this.logger.warn(`listSessions fallback: hidden filter removed all sessions (cwd=${K}, total=${j.length}, hidden=${Y.size})`),X=j),this.logger.log(`listSessions cwd=${K} total=${j.length} hidden=${Y.size} returned=${X.length}`),{type:"list_sessions_response",sessions:X}}

Replace the entire getSession(K) method with:

async getSession(K){let V=this.cwd,B;try{B=await Ld(K,{dir:V})}catch(j){if(typeof V==="string"&&/^[a-z]:\\/.test(V)){let Y=V[0].toUpperCase()+V.slice(1);if(Y!==V)try{B=await Ld(K,{dir:Y}),this.logger.warn(`getSession path-case fallback: ${V} -> ${Y} (session=${K})`),V=Y}catch{}}if(!B)try{let Y=require("os"),X=require("path"),Q=require("fs"),G=(typeof V==="string"?V:String(V)).replace(/[\\/:]/g,"-"),q=X.join(Y.homedir(),".claude","projects",G,`${K}.jsonl`);if(Q.existsSync(q)){let z=Q.readFileSync(q,"utf8").split(/\r?\n/).filter((U)=>U.trim().length>0);B=[];for(let U of z)try{B.push(JSON.parse(U))}catch{}this.logger.warn(`getSession file fallback used: session=${K} file=${q} raw=${B.length}`)}}catch{}if(!B)throw j}if(!B||B.length===0)try{let Y=require("os"),X=require("path"),Q=require("fs"),G=(typeof V==="string"?V:String(V)).replace(/[\\/:]/g,"-"),q=X.join(Y.homedir(),".claude","projects",G,`${K}.jsonl`);if(Q.existsSync(q)){let z=Q.readFileSync(q,"utf8").split(/\r?\n/).filter((U)=>U.trim().length>0),U=[];for(let Z of z)try{U.push(JSON.parse(Z))}catch{}if(U.length>0)B=U,this.logger.warn(`getSession empty->file fallback used: session=${K} file=${q} raw=${B.length}`)}}catch{}let j;try{j=await(await g1.load(V,this.logger)).getSessionDiffs(K,V,B||[])}catch{j=void 0}let Y=(B||[]).filter((H)=>H?.type==="user"||H?.type==="assistant"||H?.type==="system"||H?.type==="meta"||H?.type==="compact");return this.logger.log(`getSession id=${K} raw=${(B||[]).length} filtered=${Y.length} cwd=${V}`),{type:"get_session_response",messages:Y,sessionDiffs:j}}

Then run:

Developer: Reload Window or restart VS Code

This happened to me too and I noticed something that could be related.

I found the .jsonl file inside .claude/projects/MyProject folder.

The conversation that had the issue, was initiated with an --> image <-- directly, instead of the more common text question! Therefore instead of having a normal text as a title, this was a bit 'broken'. Perhaps that's why it wouldn't show up in the UI.

I was able to recover my conversation using /resume --my-lost-conversation's-Id-- on the terminal.

Same issue here, still an active problem.

this is soo annoying ... just add the feature

Your CLI access still working while the sidebar shows nothing points to the data being intact. What's broken is the VS Code extension's session index rather than the sessions themselves.

One check from further down this thread worth running first: look for sessions-index.json inside ~/.claude/projects/<your-project-path>/. ccalvob found that the extension reads sidebar listings from that file rather than directly from the .jsonl transcripts — if it's missing, corrupt, or much smaller than your transcript count, the sidebar has nothing to display even though the data is right there. On Mac a permissions fix (chmod 0770 on the project directories) resolved it; on Windows the equivalent is verifying the VS Code process has read access to ~/.claude/.

I built a toolkit for the recovery side of this: recover_vscode_sessions.py in BasedGPT/claude-code-session-recovery reads your full transcript files and injects missing entries into the extension's workspace session cache. Run diagnose.py from the same toolkit first; it maps ~/.claude/projects/ against the extension's index and shows which sessions are present in the files but absent from the cache, before writing anything.

Close VS Code fully before running recover_vscode_sessions.py --apply.

Hope this helps, if my tools are able to help you, would appreciate a ⭐ :)

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VS Code Extension: Past Conversations not loaded after restart #12872

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VS Code Extension: Past Conversations not loaded after restart #12872

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Current Behavior

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