How to resume a Claude Code session, and find the one you closed

Run claude --continue to reopen the last conversation in the folder you are in, or claude --resume to pick one from a list. Inside a running session, /resume does the same. Both work while Claude Code still has the session's transcript on disk — by default, 30 days.

Which resume command to run

Resume the last session: claude --continue

claude --continue (or claude -c) reopens the most recent conversation in the current directory, tool calls and results included. It skips sessions started with claude -p or the Agent SDK, and those that began with /loop; resume a -p session by its ID. With --fork-session, the copy gets a new session ID and the original stays as it was.

Resume a specific session by name or ID

$ claude --resume auth-refactor
$ claude --resume 550e8400-e29b-41d4-a716-446655440000

• By name — one you gave with claude -n or /rename, or the title Claude Code generated from your first prompt. A name is looked up in this repository and its worktrees.
• By ID — Claude Code looks in the current project first, then in every other project on the machine, so it works from any directory.

/resume <name> or /resume <id> does the same inside a session; /continue is an alias.

List sessions: the session picker

claude --resume with no argument, or /resume, opens the picker. Each row shows the session's name or title, time since last activity, git branch and file size; by default it lists sessions from the current worktree. Outside the picker, sessions are files: one .jsonl each under ~/.claude/projects/<project>/ — where they live, and for how long.

Do you need to save a session?

No. Claude Code saves sessions continuously, so closing the terminal loses nothing, and after /clear the previous conversation is still there for /resume. Name it so you can find it, and /export it — plain text, to the clipboard or a file — if you want a copy that outlives the transcript. The exception is claude -p --no-session-persistence, which saves nothing.

When resume fails

On the author's machine, checked on 2026-09-29, 96 of 116 ended Claude Code sessions had been started outside Caprock. Caprock's old continue button opened a terminal that failed for 65 of them: 44 because Claude Code had deleted the transcript, 21 because the folder was gone.

A session manager for every session

⤢

Caprock reads every Claude Code session on the machine — the ones you start in your own terminal too, and older ones still on disk when you install it.

• Find it. In the app, ⌘K searches every session Caprock knows and lists the matches under History. In the browser dashboard, tick "show ended sessions" on the Home screen and search by what the session was about, any prompt typed in it, its project or branch.
• Continue it. An ended session offers continue here; one still running in another terminal offers branch here. Either starts a second claude --resume <id> process — with --fork-session for a branch — in a terminal inside Caprock. Caprock never types into a terminal it did not start. Copy command gives you cd "<folder>" && claude --resume <id> for your own.
• Know why not. Where a resume would fail, it says can't continue with the reason: the transcript was deleted, the folder is gone, or Caprock cannot find claude to start it.
• After a restart. If Caprock or the machine stopped with sessions running, a banner on the Home screen lists them, each with continue.

What it cannot do: continue a session whose transcript is gone — its record and what Claude wrote stay searchable; the conversation does not. Codex and OpenCode sessions get continue here once they have ended, and a command to copy (resuming Codex sessions); Gemini CLI, DeepSeek Harness and Hermes Agent sessions get neither. A paired phone continues a session only if it may control sessions.

Session managers compared