claude-code - 💡(How to fix) Fix Global session history view across all projects [1 comments, 2 participants]

Preflight Checklist

• I have searched existing requests and this feature hasn't been requested yet
• This is a single feature request (not multiple features)

Problem Statement

The Claude Code VS Code extension's session history picker is scoped only to the current workspace folder. Sessions from other projects are invisible in the UI, even though they exist on disk at ~/.claude/projects/<project>/*.jsonl.

For developers who work across multiple repos this is a major workflow blocker. My own ~/.claude/projects/ contains 72 session files across 14 project folders, but the picker only ever shows the 1–3 sessions for whichever workspace VS Code currently has open. To resume work from a different project I have to physically switch VS Code workspaces first — which defeats the entire purpose of a history picker.

Concrete gaps this creates:

• No way to browse past sessions across projects in one place
• No way to search for a conversation when I can't remember which project it was in
• No way to see overall Claude Code activity / timeline
• Switching projects to find something loses the context of whatever I was doing

The GitHub Codex extension solves this with a global task history that lists every task across every repo in a single view with timestamps and project context. This is the pattern missing from Claude Code.

Proposed Solution

Add a third tab to the session picker alongside Local and Web:

"All Projects" tab that:

• Aggregates sessions from every ~/.claude/projects/*/ folder on disk
• Shows each row with: session title, project name, last-modified timestamp, message count
• Supports search/filter by keyword, project name, and date range
• Clicking an entry opens the session in a new tab (same behavior as the Local tab today)

Example row layout:

[icon] Fix OAuth callback bug stellarhack 2h ago [icon] Refactor worker pool 4ever 3d ago [icon] Exploring zk proof libraries addiv 1w ago

The data already exists on disk in a predictable layout this is a UI feature, not a data-model change. A command-palette entry like Claude Code: Show All Sessions would also work as a minimum viable version.

Alternative Solutions

Currently using the third-party agsoft.claude-history-viewer VS Code extension, which reads ~/.claude/projects/*/*.jsonl directly and shows a global list with search and diffs. It works well, but the fact that a community extension is the only way to access your own session history across projects strongly suggests this belongs in the official extension.

Other workarounds considered:

• claude --resume from the terminal — requires the CLI, which doesn't ship with the VS Code extension
• grep -l "keyword" ~/.claude/projects/*/*.jsonl — functional but clunky
• Manually opening each workspace to check its picker — completely impractical with 14 project folders

Priority

Medium - Would be very helpful

Feature Category

Other

Use Case Example

Concrete scenario from this week:

1. I'm juggling work across multiple projects: a Stellar/Soroban hackathon project, a Next.js side project, an open-source Rust contribution, and a freelance Node.js project each in its own Desktop folder.
2. On Monday I had a long Claude Code session in the Rust project where we worked out a tricky lifetime issue.
3. On Thursday a similar lifetime issue shows up in a different Rust project. I want to go back to Monday's conversation to reuse the reasoning.
4. Today I have the Thursday project open in VS Code. I click the history picker it shows only sessions for the currently open workspace. Monday's session is invisible.
5. To find it, I'd have to close the current workspace, open the Monday project, open the picker, find the session, read it, then switch back. I lose my current context in the process.

With a global "All Projects" view, I'd open the picker, search "lifetime", see results from every project tagged with their folder name, click the right one, and read it in a side panel without losing my current workspace.

This happens multiple times a week. Across the 14 project folders in my ~/.claude/projects/, there are 72 sessions I've lost practical access to.

Additional Context

Related existing issues — this feature would address the root cause that multiple workaround requests are orbiting:

• #46862 — Session Manager UI for browsing and resuming conversations
• #47581 — Session picker search should also filter by project path
• #30599 — Full-text search for conversation transcripts
• #47945 — Search/lookup sessions by UUID in session picker

A unified "All Projects" view would effectively resolve all four.

Reference implementation**: The community extension agsoft.claude-history-viewer already demonstrates that reading and presenting this data globally is straightforward it's purely a matter of bringing the capability into the official extension.

Environment where I hit this**: Windows 11, VS Code native, Claude Code extension (latest), 14 project folders accumulated over ~3 weeks of daily use.