sessions-index.json not updated, causing `claude --resume` to show stale/missing sessions

[RileyLeff]

Bug Description

claude --resume only shows a random smattering of old sessions (from ~2 weeks ago), despite having run many sessions recently. The session data itself is being saved correctly — the .jsonl files are all present on disk — but they don't appear in the resume picker.

Root Cause (identified with Claude's help)

The sessions-index.json files in ~/.claude/projects/ are either:

1. Missing entirely for many active project directories
2. Stale — not being updated when new sessions are created

For example, on my system (v2.1.39, macOS):

• 11 out of 18 project directories have no sessions-index.json at all, including directories with very recent session activity
• The index files that do exist haven't been updated since late January, despite session .jsonl files being written as recently as today

HAS INDEX: -Users-...-dev-ozzydb (Feb  4)   ← stale, sessions exist from Feb 10
NO INDEX:  -Users-...-dev-rileyviewer        ← no index, 20MB+ session from Feb 10
NO INDEX:  -Users-...-dev                    ← no index, sessions from Feb 10
NO INDEX:  -Users-...-hard-saptest1          ← no index, sessions from Feb 10

The session .jsonl files are all intact — data is not being lost. But since --resume appears to read from sessions-index.json, these sessions are invisible to the resume picker (both CLI and VS Code extension).

Steps to Reproduce

1. Run several Claude Code sessions across different project directories
2. Close them (I typically just close the terminal)
3. Run claude --resume — only old sessions appear
4. Check ~/.claude/projects/*/sessions-index.json — many are missing or stale
5. Check for .jsonl files — they exist and are recent

Expected Behavior

claude --resume should list all recent sessions, and sessions-index.json should be updated whenever a session is created or modified.

Environment

• Claude Code version: 2.1.39
• OS: macOS (Darwin 25.1.0)
• Sessions are closed by closing the terminal (no explicit exit command)

Notes

I found this bug myself; Claude helped identify the specific root cause (the stale/missing index files) by examining the session storage on disk.

[RileyLeff]

Additional finding: The local usage tracking at ~/.claude/usage-data/ appears to have the same problem. Both the report.html and per-session facet JSONs stopped being updated on Feb 4, despite active sessions running through Feb 10-11. This suggests it may be a broader issue with local metadata/index writes, not just sessions-index.json.

[github-actions]

Found 3 possible duplicate issues:

1. sessions-index.json not updated - claude -c fails to find sessions #22462
2. [BUG] sessions-index.json stops being updated after v2.1.31 — new sessions invisible to /resume #23614
3. Sessions-index.json: summaries not generated and new sessions not indexed since ~v2.1.31 #24729

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🤖 Generated with Claude Code

[genesiscz]

Confirmed: Same issue here (macOS)

Can confirm this bug on macOS with similar findings:

Environment

• OS: macOS (Darwin 25.2.0)
• Claude Code: 2.1.39+
• 8 project directories checked

Findings

Session indexing completely stopped on: February 4, 2026 at 00:33 UTC

• All 8 project directories have sessions-index.json files
• Last indexed session across all projects: Feb 4, 2026, 00:33:54 UTC
• Total session files on disk: 3,080+ .jsonl files
• Latest session file: Feb 12, 2026 (today) - NOT indexed
• Sessions created after Feb 4: 0% indexed

Example from one project:

Project: [redacted]
  Total .jsonl files: 809
  Indexed in sessions-index.json: 217
  Latest indexed: Feb 4, 00:33 UTC
  Latest .jsonl file: Feb 12, 17:38 UTC (today)
  Missing from index: 592 sessions (73%)

Empty Summaries Also Present

Some indexed sessions (created before Feb 4) have empty summaries:

• Project A: 72/280 sessions (26%) with empty summaries
• Project B: 92/112 sessions (82%!) with empty summaries

This suggests two separate issues:

1. Summary generation degraded starting late January (some summaries empty)
2. Indexing completely stopped on Feb 4, 00:33 UTC (no new entries)

Potential Connection to #16157

The timeline aligns suspiciously with the usage quota bug (#16157):

• Jan 19-26: Anthropic announces "rolled out changes to reduce token usage" (comment)
• Late January: Session summaries start becoming empty (costs tokens to generate)
• Feb 4, 00:33 UTC: Session indexing completely stops

Session summary generation requires API calls (potentially 100K+ input tokens per session × all users). Disabling this would significantly reduce token consumption, which may have been an emergency response to the usage crisis.

Whether this was intentional cost-cutting or an unintended side effect of the late-January changes is unclear, but the timing is too coincidental to ignore.

[tirufege]

I can confirm this issue on Linux (Ubuntu, Claude Code 2.1.41).

Findings:

• sessions-index.json has 28 entries, with the newest modified date being January 23, 2026
• Meanwhile, there are 127 .jsonl session files on disk, including many from February 10-13
• That means 99 sessions created after late January are completely missing from the index
• Sessions show up in the /resume picker (presumably from the .jsonl files), but clicking on them gives "Session was not found" because the index lookup fails

Workaround:
I wrote a Python script that parses all .jsonl files on disk and rebuilds the missing entries in sessions-index.json — extracting firstPrompt, customTitle, messageCount, timestamps, etc. from the raw session data. After running it, /resume works again for all sessions.

Happy to share the script if anyone needs it.

Environment:

• Claude Code: 2.1.41
• OS: Linux 5.15.0-164-generic (Ubuntu)
• cleanupPeriodDays: 3650

[tirufege]

Here's the repair script I mentioned: https://gist.github.com/tirufege/0720c288092c1a3a4750f7c198aa524b

It scans all .jsonl session files on disk, extracts metadata (first prompt, custom title, message count, timestamps), and adds missing entries to sessions-index.json. Creates a .bak backup before writing.

# Repair all projects
python3 repair-sessions-index.py

# Repair a specific project directory
python3 repair-sessions-index.py ~/.claude/projects/-home-user-myproject