Picking up where you left off means remembering which folders you were in and which conversation each tab held. After closing tabs, switching machines, or a reboot, that context is gone.

claude-resume (command ars) brings it back in one command. It reads the sessions Claude Code already keeps on disk, and reopens each recent chat as a Windows Terminal tab, started in the right folder and auto-resumed.

• Nothing to save. Claude writes every conversation to disk on each message, so there is no capture step and nothing to miss.
• Right folder, right chat. Each tab opens in the session's own directory and runs claude --resume for that exact conversation.
• Every chat, not just one. A single folder can hold several conversations. ars reopens the recent chats in each recent folder, up to a per-folder limit you set, instead of collapsing each folder to one.
• Recent only. By default it looks back 24 hours, so you do not resurrect stale chats.
• Pick when you want. A tree menu lets you expand a folder and choose exactly which chats to reopen.

Quick Start

$ ars                          # reopen every recent chat, in every recent folder
Reopening 5 session(s) in Windows Terminal...

$ ars --pick                   # tree menu: expand a folder, pick individual chats
$ ars --per-dir 5              # reopen up to 5 chats per folder for this run
$ ars --since 12h              # widen or narrow the window (12h, 2d, 90m, 1w)
$ ars --list                   # preview recents grouped by folder, open nothing

Install

Requires Node.js 18+, Windows Terminal (wt), and Claude Code (claude on PATH).

npm install -g claude-resume-ars

That puts both claude-resume and the short alias ars on your PATH.

If PowerShell blocks the command with an execution-policy error, allow local scripts once:

Set-ExecutionPolicy -Scope CurrentUser -ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned

Usage

ars              # reopen every recent chat in every recent folder (last 24h)
ars --pick       # tree menu of recent folders; expand to choose chats
ars --list       # show recent chats grouped by folder, open nothing (last week)
ars --since 12h  # window as 12h, 2d, 90m, 1w (a bare number means hours)
ars --all-time   # no age cutoff
ars --limit 4    # cap how many folders to show/reopen
ars --per-dir 5  # cap chats reopened per folder (default from config)
ars --safe       # resume without --dangerously-skip-permissions
ars --dry-run    # print what would open, open nothing
ars --debug      # keep each tab open with a pause if resume fails
ars --config     # show the settings file path and current values

Every session resumes with --dangerously-skip-permissions so Claude starts without a permission prompt. Pass --safe if you want the normal prompt back.

Bare ars looks back 24 hours. --pick shows your recent folders regardless of age (newest first by last activity), so a folder you touched long ago but talked to recently still appears; expand any of them to choose individual chats. --list looks back a week. An explicit --since, --all-time, or --limit overrides these defaults.

In the --pick tree menu, each folder is a top-level bullet. Up/Down move, Space expands or collapses the highlighted folder (Left/Right also collapse/expand), and once expanded its chats show as indented bullets. Space on a chat toggles it, A toggles every chat, Enter opens the checked chats (or, if none are checked, the highlighted folder's chats or the highlighted chat), Esc cancels.

Settings

How many recent chats a folder surfaces and reopens comes from ~/.claude-resume.json:

{ "chatsPerDir": 3 }

It defaults to 3 when the file is absent. --per-dir N overrides it for a single run, and ars --config prints the resolved value and file path.

How it works

Claude Code writes every conversation to ~/.claude/projects/<encoded-dir>/<session-id>.jsonl and appends to it on every message. Each file records its own working directory, and the filename is the session id.

claude-resume is a reader. It scans that store, groups the sessions by directory, and keeps the most recent chatsPerDir chats in each folder within your time window. For each chat it reads a short title (the session summary Claude records, or the first thing you asked) so sibling chats from one folder stay distinguishable, writes a small wrapper .cmd that runs claude --resume <id> in the folder, and opens them as Windows Terminal tabs.

Sessions whose directory no longer exists are skipped, so a deleted project or a recycled worktree never reopens a dead folder.

Wrapper files hold real paths as literal text and wt is handed forward-slash paths, which sidesteps the backslash mangling that breaks a naive wt ... cmd /k "C:\..." launch.

License

MIT