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[BUG] claude is losing chat history #16970
Description
Preflight Checklist
- I have searched existing issues and this hasn't been reported yet
- This is a single bug report (please file separate reports for different bugs)
- I am using the latest version of Claude Code
What's Wrong?
latest version of claude code seems to fail at compacting or something and then when I go to resume the chat history isnt there - its like 5 hours earlier. Missing the most recent work... SUPER FRUSTRATING
What Should Happen?
it should work
Error Messages/Logs
Steps to Reproduce
asf
Claude Model
None
Is this a regression?
Yes, this worked in a previous version
Last Working Version
No response
Claude Code Version
v2.1.1
Platform
Anthropic API
Operating System
macOS
Terminal/Shell
Terminal.app (macOS)
Additional Information
No response
Reacted by Kyle Smith and isysowmay
Reacted by Kyle Smith
Activity
github-actions commentedon Jan 8, 2026
Found 3 possible duplicate issues:
This issue will be automatically closed as a duplicate in 3 days.
🤖 Generated with Claude Code
JorritGru commentedon Jan 8, 2026
I'm experiencing the same issue in visual studio code. Agreed, it is very frustrating to have to explain the same thing over and over...
knksmith57 commentedon Jan 9, 2026
I think this upgrade just silently nuked 4 months of my local chat logs under
~/.claude/projects/without prompting even though I've had"cleanupPeriodDays": 99999in my~/.claude/settings.jsonconfig for literally months now.Edit: filed #16978
JensLincke commentedon Feb 2, 2026
I ran into the same problem, but I did not know that cleanupPeriodDays was a thing in the first place!
#22547
For me these chats are user data... they are my files on my disk... why are they deleted? This is no browser cache or download folder that can be recreated any time! This is user data! Am I seeing this wrong? What the fuck!
Solido commentedon Feb 22, 2026
In my case this is after each restart of the desktop. It delete everything and not even add them to memory system which says it knows nothing about me. How to you deal with that? it's like you need to repay in tokens each time. I'm now manually exporting each thread to reload it...
vstoyanov commentedon Apr 12, 2026
How in hell could such a brutal defect stay open with complete silence for a fourth month already. Anthropic is truly a clown company...
paultorben commentedon Apr 25, 2026
Claude Code silently deleting chat files that are older than a month is a very serious issue to me - i see the feature request to add a toggle for changing this, but having already lost several (20+) projects chat - unknowingly because they were silently deleted by claude code at startup - i just cannot even
cinerobert commentedon May 21, 2026
I just noticed this issue myself. Several chats that I haven't looked at in a few months, that are now completely empty. The agent thinks they are new chats when asked. There is no chat summary from any compression.
github-actions commentedon Jun 20, 2026
Closing for now — inactive for too long. Please open a new issue if this is still relevant.
github-actions commentedon Aug 23, 2026
This issue has been automatically locked since it was closed and has not had any activity for 7 days. If you're experiencing a similar issue, please file a new issue and reference this one if it's relevant.