Session title diverges between Desktop app and mobile/web — two independent title stores that never reconcile

[AviHack]

Preflight Checklist

• I have searched existing issues. Closest are [FEATURE] Recent activity shows last message instead of generating meaningful session titles #36164 (recents show last message), [BUG] Session titles revert to last-prompt text after session close, overriding custom-title entries #32150 / [Bug] Session names auto-overwritten, ignoring user-set names #49712 / [BUG] Session name reverting after manual change #63127 (auto-title overwrites custom title), Renamed session titles don't persist + first user prompt ignored + panels reflow on new content #63765 (VS Code rename not persisting), and [DOCS] Remote Control docs omit that claude.ai renames persist to the local CLI session title #48868 (docs: claude.ai→CLI rename). None describes this two-store desktop↔mobile divergence or its mechanism.
• This is a single bug report.
• I am using the latest version of Claude Code (v2.1.156).

What's Wrong?

The same Claude Code session shows two different titles depending on the surface you view it from:

• Desktop app sidebar → a clean, AI-generated title (e.g. Email formatting and presentation).
• iOS Code tab / claude.ai web → the first user message instead (e.g. what do you suggest we do?), or — if you ever interrupted a turn — a junk artifact like session interrupted by user.

Root cause (verified on disk on Windows): the Desktop app keeps two independent title stores for the same session and never reconciles them:

1. Native Code-tab store — %APPDATA%\Roaming\Claude\claude-code-sessions\<ws>\<x>\local_<id>.json → title. This is the app's own aiTitle, and it's what the desktop sidebar renders. (File is keyed by the desktop's own session id; the CLI id is in cliSessionId, and bridgeSessionIds links to the cloud session.)
2. Cloud Bridge store — the embedded claude.ai cache at %APPDATA%\Roaming\Claude\IndexedDB\https_claude.ai_* (record kind:"bridge", tag:"remote-control-sdk", keyed by the bridge session id) → title. This is what iOS and claude.ai/code render.

The local CLI transcript (~/.claude/projects/.../<id>.jsonl) and .claude.json contain no session title field at all (.claude.json only caches lastSessionFirstPrompt), so neither title is shared through those.

Because the two stores generate titles independently and never sync, the surfaces disagree by default. Which surface you rename from then determines what happens:

Action	Native store (desktop)	Cloud Bridge (mobile/web)	Result
No explicit rename	auto aiTitle	first / last message (or interrupt marker)	diverges
Rename from iOS / claude.ai	unchanged	updated	diverges further
Rename via Desktop app's Rename button	updated	updated	unified ✅
/rename slash command in the Desktop Code tab	"not available in this environment"	—	no-op
/rename slash command from iOS	unchanged	unchanged	no-op

So the only action that makes all three surfaces agree is the desktop Rename button, which writes both stores. An iOS/web rename only ever updates the cloud side.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Enable Remote Control by default (Desktop: Settings → Claude Code → Enable remote control by default).
2. Start a session in the Desktop app and send a few messages, but do not rename it.
3. Observe the desktop sidebar title — a meaningful AI-generated title.
4. Open the same session in the iOS app's Code tab (or claude.ai/code). It shows the first user message instead of that title.
5. Rename it from iOS → only the mobile/web title changes; the desktop sidebar keeps its old title.
6. Rename it via the Desktop app's Rename button → both finally match.

Expected Behavior

A single canonical title per session, consistent across desktop, web, and mobile. At minimum, the desktop's auto-generated aiTitle should propagate to the cloud Bridge session the same way a desktop rename does — so the mobile/web Code list doesn't fall back to the raw first message.

Additional Notes

• The cloud Bridge title also latches onto interrupt markers: after interrupting a turn, the mobile/web title became session interrupted by user and never refreshed. (Possibly related to the earlier "/resume showing interrupt messages as session titles" fix, but on the Remote Control / cloud path.)
• Environment: Claude Code Desktop app, v2.1.156, Windows 11. Remote Control enabled at startup.

[github-actions]

Found 2 possible duplicate issues:

1. [BUG] Conversation titles differ between Claude for Windows and VS Code extension for same session #29801
2. Desktop sidebar ignores UserPromptSubmit hook sessionTitle output #55951

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🤖 Generated with Claude Code

[AviHack]

Thanks — I checked both; this isn't a duplicate of either, though #55951 is closely related and actually corroborates part of the mechanism.

#29801 (closed) is the same family but a different surface pair (Windows desktop vs the VS Code extension), and its proposed cause is inaccurate: the ~/.claude/projects/.../*.jsonl transcript contains no title field at all. This issue is about desktop vs iOS / claude.ai (cloud).

#55951 correctly documents the desktop's native claude-code-sessions/.../local_*.json → title + titleSource (auto/user) — I can confirm the same on Windows v2.1.156 (titleSource: "user" after a UI rename). But it's scoped to the hook path (the sidebar ignoring UserPromptSubmit sessionTitle). This issue is about the second store: the cloud Bridge record in the desktop's embedded IndexedDB/https_claude.ai_* (kind:"bridge", tag:"remote-control-sdk") that iOS and claude.ai/code read — plus the rename-direction asymmetry:

• Desktop Rename button → writes both stores → all surfaces agree.
• iOS / claude.ai rename → writes only the cloud Bridge → desktop sidebar unchanged.
• /rename slash command → not available in the desktop Code tab; no-op from iOS.

Happy to have it grouped with #55951 if you'd prefer a single "title stores aren't unified" tracker, but the mobile/cloud axis isn't covered by either of the flagged issues.

[DanRxn]

Seeing this too. When I ask Dispatch to create a session with a chosen name, that name shows on the Dispatch side, but the Code-tab session list shows a different auto-generated title (a first-prompt summary, or a host-animal-animal fallback). The two never reconcile, so the name I set is not usable for finding the session later. Having the Dispatch-supplied name win — or a single shared title store — would fix it.