How to Recover Crashed Claude Code Sessions in Under 30 Seconds (2026)

You had 6 Claude Code sessions doing work. Terminal crashed. Now what?

If you just relaunch the terminal, you get 6 empty tabs. All the context — the files each session was editing, the prompts you gave, the mid-flow work — is gone. This post is about the setup that avoids that.

The problem, in three parts

1. Terminal apps don't remember per-tab working directory across crashes.
2. Claude Code sessions have their own history file per session, but you don't know which was which.
3. Even if you resume all 6, you don't know which was the one working on the auth bug vs the payment refactor.

The recovery pattern

1. Named per-project sessions

Assign a color and name to each Claude Code session by project. When you relaunch, you know at a glance which tile was doing what.

2. Auto-cd on relaunch

Each tile should re-enter its working directory automatically. This alone saves 15-20 seconds per session.

3. Claude Code resume

claude --resume <session-id> restores full context. But you need to know which session-id belongs to which project.

4. Tile manager that tracks all three

The manager should remember: name, color, cwd, session-id for each tile. On relaunch, restore all four for every tile in one action.

What Agent Desk does

Agent Desk on macOS keeps this state per tile. When you relaunch after a crash:

• Every tile comes back in its own named panel with its color
• Each panel re-cds to its project directory
• Each panel resumes its Claude Code session (full context)

Total recovery time: ~15-30 seconds, not the 5-10 minutes it takes to manually rebuild.

The one-time setup

1. Install Agent Desk.
2. For each project, drag a Claude Code session into a new panel and name it.
3. That's it. Crash-recovery is automatic from then on.

$10 once, full source ships with it, no subscription.