if an old claude code session is missing from /resume, there are two possible reasons. it was deleted, or it's still there and the picker just can't find it
1. claude code deletes old sessions after 30 days
claude code saves every session as a .jsonl file under ~/.claude/projects/, one folder per project
there's a setting called cleanupPeriodDays. by default it's 30. claude code regularly deletes session files that haven't been touched in that many days, without any message. no warning, no recycle bin. (sessions you started or last continued in the claude desktop app are exempt since v2.1.248, unless your company's managed settings set cleanupPeriodDays. then they get deleted too, and your own 3650 won't override it)
this is about the files on your machine, not claude.ai chats
i checked my own machine. my prompt history goes back to march, but every session older than 30 days is just gone. 86 of them
to stop it, open ~/.claude/settings.json and set a big number:
{
"cleanupPeriodDays": 3650
}
that's about 10 years. 0 doesn't mean "keep forever", it fails validation (older versions used to stop saving sessions entirely with 0). so just use a big number
sessions that were already deleted are gone. nothing on your machine has them anymore
2. it's still there, the picker just doesn't show it
if the session is under 30 days old (or you already raised the setting), it's probably still on disk. /resume misses it for two reasons:
- it only shows sessions from the project you're in. press
ctrl+ain the picker to see every project - typing in the picker only matches session titles, not what you actually said. titles are usually your first message, like "fix this" or "look at the error"
so if you remember the topic but not the folder or the first message, the picker won't help much
3. search inside the sessions
manual way. grep the files:
grep -ril "payload size" ~/.claude/projects/
it works, but you get raw json, you have to work out which session the file is, and then cd to the right folder and run claude --resume <id> yourself
what i use. i got tired of that and built ccback, a free open-source cli:
npm install -g ccback
ccback payload size
it searches everything you and claude wrote in every session across all your projects (by words and by meaning), shows the matching message, and enter reopens that session in its original folder
one honest note: ccback reads the same files, so it can't bring back sessions claude code already deleted. raise cleanupPeriodDays first
tldr
- sessions older than 30 days get deleted on startup. set
"cleanupPeriodDays": 3650in~/.claude/settings.json -
/resumeshows one project and matches titles only.ctrl+ashows all projects - to search what was actually said:
grep -rin~/.claude/projects/, orccback
Top comments (2)
Two details on the desktop exemption, both from the claude-directory page. First, it is not only about where a session started: the docs keep the transcript of a session you "started or most recently continued" in Claude Desktop or Cowork, so the last place you continued it counts too. Second, the exemption has two documented exceptions. Those transcripts go back to the normal cleanupPeriodDays deletion when managed settings set cleanupPeriodDays, or when the HIPAA configuration applies to your sessions. On a company laptop with a managed value, desktop sessions age out the same way as CLI ones. A user-level 3650 does not help there, because managed settings take precedence over your own settings file.
oh didn't know the managed settings part, that's nasty for anyone on a company laptop. updating the post