How to Bring Back Many Claude Code Sessions After a Reboot (macOS)

If you run several AI coding agents, the worst tax isn't the work — it's the recovery. A crash, an OS update, or an accidental reboot, and suddenly you're manually reopening ten terminals, cd-ing each into the right directory, and resuming each session by hand. Here's how to make that survivable.

Why "just start over" isn't a plan at fleet scale

With one terminal, restarting is trivial. With ten long-lived sessions — each in a different repo, each mid-task — reconstructing the whole layout by hand is a real chore you pay every time anything hiccups. The goal is to make restoration automatic, so a reboot costs seconds, not an afternoon.

What you can script yourself

You can get part of the way with discipline:

• Record each session's working directory in a file as you start them.
• Use claude --resume so a relaunched session continues where it left off instead of starting cold.
• Write a small shell script that reads your directory list and reopens each session with --resume in its folder.

This works, but you have to maintain the list, and it doesn't restore your layout — which pane was where, what each was named.

Where a purpose-built app removes the chore

If you'd rather not maintain restore scripts, the thing worth having is an app that remembers the whole arrangement — every session as a tile with its project and folder, relaunched with --resume in its original directory when you reopen the app. That's a core reason restore is built into Agent Tile: at fleet scale, recovery should be automatic. It's a one-time $10 macOS app with full source included.

For the surrounding workflow, see running multiple sessions in parallel and do you need a tool or just discipline.

Takeaway

At fleet scale, plan for recovery before you need it: record working directories, use --resume, and script the reopen — or let an app remember the layout so a reboot costs seconds. Either way, "just start over" stops being your recovery plan.