Add /resume (session resume) to desktop app

[sachah]

Summary

The CLI supports resuming prior sessions via claude --resume / claude --continue / /resume, but the desktop app has no equivalent. There's no /resume slash command and no session picker UI.

Request

Bring session resume to the desktop app at parity with the CLI:

• /resume slash command, or
• A session history picker (list prior sessions, select to resume with full context)
• Support for --continue equivalent (resume most recent session in the current working directory)

Why

• CLI and desktop currently diverge on a core workflow feature.
• Users who switch between CLI and desktop lose the ability to pick up prior work when in the desktop app.
• Session history already appears to be saved — exposing it in the UI should be mostly a surfacing problem.

Environment

• Claude Code desktop app (latest)

[github-actions]

Found 1 possible duplicate issue:

1. [FEATURE] Add URI to resume headless sessions in Claude Desktop #50054

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[davidsoergel]

+1 — also covers the broader case of any CLI session (not just -p/scripted): the JSONL files at ~/.claude/projects/<slug>/<session-id>.jsonl are invisible to the desktop app's sidebar. Having the app read that directory would let users move between terminal and desktop without losing history.

[danpillay87]

Related gap from a different angle: I've got an MCP tool that full-text searches session transcript content (the built-in picker/session list only matches the auto-generated title, so anything not literally in the title — a ticket ID, error string, filename — never surfaces). It reliably finds the right session, but there's then no way to actually open it: the tool can hand back a session UUID and title, but nothing turns that into something clickable or resumable.

Same underlying gap as the /resume ask above — a session picker (or a UUID-addressable resume) would close it either way. Worth noting there's a search/discovery use case here too, not just CLI/desktop parity: anything that surfaces a session ID programmatically (MCP tools, logs, scripts) currently has no way to hand it back to the user as something they can click into.

(Started on the near-duplicate #50345, which auto-closed/locked as a dupe before I could post — landing this here instead per its own bot comment.)