claude-code - 💡(How to fix) Fix awaySummary recap is one-way: assistant cannot see or access it [2 comments, 2 participants]

Summary

The away summary ("※ recap:") shown to users when they return after 5+ minutes is generated from a separate prompt and displayed in the terminal UI, but is never injected back into the assistant's conversation context and is not accessible via any tool.

The problem

This creates an asymmetry: the recap shapes the user's mental model of where the session is, but the assistant has no visibility into what was shown. If a user reads the recap and then asks a follow-up question based on it, the assistant is flying blind to the framing the user just received.

What would make it useful

One of:

• Inject the generated recap text back as a system message at the start of the next turn, so the assistant sees the same summary the user does
• Expose it via a tool (e.g. a read-only getSessionRecap tool) so the assistant can retrieve it on demand
• At minimum, make the recap visible in the conversation transcript so both sides share the same state

Current behavior

• Recap is generated with a separate internal prompt ("Recap in under 40 words...")
• Displayed to user with "※ recap:" prefix
• Not visible to assistant in any form
• Not accessible via any tool
• Controlled by awaySummaryEnabled / CLAUDE_CODE_ENABLE_AWAY_SUMMARY (currently @internal)

Why it matters

The recap is meant to help coordination when returning to a session. Coordination requires shared state. Right now it only updates one side of the conversation.