[BUG] /resume is broken — session history inaccessible since v2.1.31 (3 root causes identified)

[scapeshift-ojones]

Summary

Since ~v2.1.31 (Feb 4, 2026), users cannot access their session history. /resume shows only ~5-10 recent sessions despite hundreds existing on disk. claude -c fails to find previous sessions. This affects all platforms (macOS, Windows, Linux) and all versions from 2.1.31 through 2.1.42+.

Session data is NOT lost — .jsonl files are intact on disk — but there is no working UI to access them.

Three Distinct Root Causes

Community reverse-engineering of cli.js (v2.1.39) has identified three separate bugs causing this:

Bug 1: sessions-index.json stopped being written (~Feb 4, 00:33 UTC)

New sessions are no longer added to the index. Across multiple reporters:

• 3,080+ .jsonl files on disk, only 740 indexed (24%), 0% indexed after Feb 4
• ~/.claude/usage-data/ also stopped updating on the same date
• Summary generation degraded earlier (late January) — all new entries have "summary": ""
• Affects every project directory, not project-specific

Timeline correlation: This coincides with Anthropic's token usage reduction rollout (ref #16157). Session summary generation costs 100K+ input tokens per session — disabling it would reduce platform-wide token consumption.

Bug 2: /resume picker hardcoded to 10-session initial batch

Source analysis of minified cli.js (v2.1.39) by @tracymelody:

• sessions-index.json is never read — the string doesn't appear in the source
• /resume uses readdirSync to scan .jsonl files, sorts by mtime
• Initial batch is hardcoded to 10 (K=10 parameter)
• Load-more trigger depends on terminal height: page_size = Math.floor((terminal_rows - ~10) / 3)
• With a 24-row terminal, page_size=4, the load-more trigger doesn't fire (Ink SelectInput wraps at list boundary instead of scrolling)
• C7z filter discards "lite" sessions (no firstPrompt AND no customTitle), further reducing the visible list

One-line fix (from @tracymelody on #24435):

sed -i 's/async function _c1(A,q,K=10)/async function _c1(A,q,K=500)/' cli.js

Bug 3: Case-sensitive worktree path comparison (Windows)

From @agatho on #24729:

• Multi-worktree code path does dir.name === s (case-sensitive)
• git worktree list returns C:/... but project directory stores c--...
• Comparison fails silently, sessions not found
• Only triggers with >1 git worktree

Steps to Reproduce

# Check how many sessions exist on disk vs. what /resume shows
find ~/.claude/projects -name "*.jsonl" | wc -l
# Compare to /resume picker count (typically shows 5-10)
claude --resume

# Check index staleness
for idx in ~/.claude/projects/*/sessions-index.json; do
  echo "$idx: $(stat -f '%Sm' "$idx" 2>/dev/null || stat -c '%y' "$idx" 2>/dev/null)"
done
# All will show dates on or before Feb 4, 2026

Expected Behavior

/resume and claude -c should list ALL previous sessions, not just the 5-10 most recent.

Workarounds

1. claude --resume <keyword> — bypasses the picker entirely, searches all .jsonl files on disk
2. claude --resume <session-id> — direct resume by UUID
3. claude install 2.1.29 — last working version
4. Community repair scripts: bosmadev/claude, tirufege/gist

Environment

• Versions affected: 2.1.31 through 2.1.42 (all current)
• Last working version: 2.1.29
• Platforms: macOS, Windows 11, Linux (Ubuntu), WSL2
• Terminals: Ghostty, iTerm2, Terminal.app, Windows Terminal, VS Code integrated

Consolidates These Issues

This issue consolidates 12+ reports of the same bug cluster:

Issue	Title	👍
#22878	/resume not listing sessions in v2.1.30	13
#23614	sessions-index.json stops being updated after v2.1.31	7
#25032	sessions-index.json not updated, /resume shows stale sessions	3
#24435	Resume picker only shows ~8 most recent sessions	2
#22462	sessions-index.json not updated, claude -c fails	1
#23421	sessions-index.json stops updating (Linux/WSL2)	1
#22205	Sessions not added to sessions-index.json	1
#25729	/resume only shows ~5-10 most recent sessions	0
#25552	/resume missing sessions: index out of sync	0
#25685	Session resume picker shows no sessions	0
#24729	sessions-index.json not updated (Windows worktree bug)	1
#25130	[FEATURE] Allow /resume to display full session history	0

Combined engagement: 29+ thumbs-up, 50+ comments, 12+ independent reports across 3 platforms.

Please close the above as duplicates pointing here if this is adopted as the canonical tracking issue.

[scapeshift-ojones]

Related: #26125 (Ctrl+O/Ctrl+E broken — no way to view pre-compaction history)

These two issues compound: a user who can't find their session (#26123) AND can't view pre-compaction history within it (#26125) has no path to recover past work.

They may also share a root cause — both involve broken summary/metadata generation that correlates with the ~Feb 4 token-reduction changes. Bug 1 here (session summaries stopped being written, all new entries have "summary": "") and the poor-quality compaction summaries in #26125 may trace back to the same upstream change.