Back Monday and Can't Find Friday's Claude Session? Name It, Then Resume It by Name.

At a glance

• Claude Code saves every session as you work, so Friday's conversation is still there after you close the terminal or run /clear.
• Naming a session with claude -n or /rename turns it into a handle you can resume directly with claude --resume and the name.
• The /resume picker searches, previews and widens across worktrees and projects when you forget the name.

On Friday afternoon you had three Claude Code sessions going: the auth refactor, a flaky test hunt and a quick question about the deploy script. Now it is Monday morning. claude --continue opens the most recent session in that directory, which is the deploy question, and the picker shows a list of auto-generated titles that all sound alike. So you start over and explain the refactor again, even though Claude Code kept the old session.

Why it matters

A session holds what you spent an hour building up: the files Claude read, the plan you agreed on and the dead ends you already ruled out. The sessions guide says to give sessions descriptive names so they are findable in the picker and resumable by name, and that this matters most when you work on several tasks in parallel. Unnamed sessions get a generated title from your first prompt, which also works as a handle, but you have to guess it. A name you chose is one you will remember on Monday.

Our reading: name any session you expect to come back to, at the moment you start it.

How to name and resume your sessions

We built these steps from Anthropic's docs and have not run them in a live session.

1. Name it at startup. Run claude -n auth-refactor (the long form is --name). The name shows in /resume and in the terminal title.
2. Or name it mid-session. Type /rename auth-refactor, and the name also appears on the prompt bar. Run /rename with no name and Claude Code generates one from the conversation.
3. Resume it directly. From the same repository, claude --resume auth-refactor reopens it, or /resume auth-refactor if you are already inside another session. An exact match resumes even if the session lives in a different worktree.
4. Forgot the name? Run claude --resume or /resume with nothing after it to open the picker. Start typing to search, press Space to preview a session, Ctrl+B to show only sessions from the current git branch, and Enter to resume. Ctrl+R renames the highlighted session.
5. Widen the search. In the picker, Ctrl+W shows every worktree of the repository (if it has more than one) and Ctrl+A shows every project on this machine. Picking a session from an unrelated project copies a cd and resume command to your clipboard.
6. Before you /clear, label what you are leaving. /clear release-prep names the old conversation in the picker, and the new one starts unnamed.

claude -n auth-refactor          # start a named session
/rename auth-refactor            # or name the one you are in
claude --resume auth-refactor    # Monday: reopen it by name
/resume auth-refactor            # same, from inside a session
claude --resume                  # no name: open the picker
Space / Ctrl+B / Ctrl+R          # picker: preview, this branch, rename
Ctrl+W / Ctrl+A                  # picker: all worktrees, all projects
/clear release-prep              # name the old one, start fresh

Gotchas

• The name matches two sessions. claude --resume opens the picker with the name filled in as a search. /resume reports an error instead, so run it bare and pick.
• The default label does not resume. A session you never name shows a default display name such as my-app-3f in agent view. That is not a resume handle. Use the generated title or set a real name.
• Old sessions vanish quietly. Claude Code deletes transcripts of sessions you have not used for 30 days by default, without a message, and they drop out of the picker. Set cleanupPeriodDays in settings.json to keep them longer. Setting 0 fails validation.
• Launch flags do not come back. If the session depended on --mcp-config, --settings, --plugin-dir or --add-dir, pass them again when you resume. Your settings.json files are read fresh at launch, so those need nothing extra.

Sources:

• Manage sessions, Claude Code docs
• CLI reference, name and resume flags, Claude Code docs
• Commands reference, /rename, /resume and /clear, Claude Code docs
• Settings reference, cleanupPeriodDays, Claude Code docs

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