[BUG] Scheduled-task sessions surface inconsistently in Desktop sidebar: sometimes as unmarked ordinary chats, sometimes not at all; no badge, no running indicator, no reliable way to find them

[eddyplolz]

Preflight Checklist

• I have searched existing issues and this hasn't been reported yet
• This is a single bug report (please file separate reports for different bugs)
• I am using the latest version of Claude Code

What's Wrong?

Sessions spawned by scheduled tasks (the scheduled-tasks system / schedule skill) are handled inconsistently by the Claude Desktop sidebar, observed twice in one day on the same machine:

CASE A - appears, but unmarked: A scheduled task fired at 9:00 AM and its session ("Micrasbot async db offender review") ran for ~40 minutes. It DID appear in the sidebar, but as a completely ordinary chat: no badge, no "scheduled" or "running" indicator, nothing distinguishing it from my own conversations. Real consequence: while trying to identify my own active chat among the entries, I renamed the worker session believing it was my current conversation, and then could no longer find the worker by its title — because I had unknowingly renamed it. There was no way to tell which sidebar entry was the background run.

CASE B - never appears: A second one-time task fired at 9:51 AM (created as a deliberate re-test on the latest version). Its session ran, wrote its output files, and is returned by the session-management API (title "Sidebar visibility test", cwd set, valid sessionId) — but it never appeared in the sidebar at all, while I watched in real time. There was no UI surface to find, open, or stop it.

So whether a scheduled run is findable in the UI is effectively a coin flip, and even when it is findable it's indistinguishable from a normal chat.

What Should Happen?

Scheduled/background sessions should appear in the sidebar reliably (every run, not sometimes), and be visibly distinct from the user's own conversations. Maybe could be a dedicated section or a badge, plus a running indicator while active so they can be found, opened, monitored, and stopped from the UI. Issue #54524 requested essentially this before being closed; the behavior on current versions is still broken and now also inconsistent.

Error Messages/Logs

No errors — the tasks themselves run correctly (scheduler shows lastRunAt on time; output files written). Session API evidence for the invisible run (case B), returned while the sidebar showed nothing:

{
  "sessionId": "local_1189eb82-bdbc-41bf-b9f6-d513164ce1fa",
  "title": "Sidebar visibility test",
  "cwd": "C:\\Users\\polit\\Claude\\projects\\nax-discord",
  "isArchived": false,
  "lastActivityAt": "2026-06-12T16:53:27.441Z"
}

Steps to Reproduce

1. In the Claude Desktop app, ask Claude to create a one-time scheduled task a few minutes in the future (e.g. "schedule a task for 3 minutes from now that writes two lines to scratch.txt, waits 90 seconds, appends 'done', then ends").
2. Wait for the fire time and watch the sidebar while the task runs.
3. Observed (case B): no new entry appears anywhere in the sidebar during or after the run, even though the session exists (the session-management MCP lists it with its title and sessionId, and its output files are written to disk).
4. On other runs (case A, a 40-minute task earlier the same day), the session DOES appear — but as a plain chat with no marker that it is a scheduled/background run, making it indistinguishable from the user's own conversations.
5. Either way there is no badge, no dedicated section, and no running indicator.

Claude Model

Other

Is this a regression?

I don't know

Last Working Version

No response

Claude Code Version

Claude 1.12603.1 (3df4fd) 2026-06-11T16:57:36.000Z (Claude Code, Desktop)

Platform

Anthropic API

Operating System

Windows

Terminal/Shell

Other

Additional Information

• Not sure how to answer the Terminal/Shell question, btw. I just used the Claude Desktop app.
• Both cases on the same day, same machine: Claude Code 2.1.175, Claude Desktop app reporting up to date, Windows 11 Home 26200.
• Related prior reports, all closed while the behavior persists: Scheduled routines no longer have dedicated sidebar section; sessions mixed into regular list and pinning broken #54524 (routines lost their dedicated sidebar section; running routines can't be found — matches case A exactly), Scheduled tab missing from sidebar after recent update #49942 (Scheduled tab missing), [BUG] Schedule entry missing from desktop sidebar (present on web) #50928 (Schedule entry on web but not Desktop), [BUG] Routines are not visible in sidebar #55045 (web: routines invisible), [BUG] Cowork scheduled tasks missing from desktop sidebar — only subset rendered; macOS; tasks exist on disk and run correctly #60667 (macOS: only a subset of scheduled tasks rendered), [BUG] Desktop app sidebar shows only ~30 of 378 CLI sessions (Windows, v2.1.109) #48495 (sidebar shows only a fraction of sessions), [BUG] Scheduled tasks sidebar not updated after removal via chat #35717 (sidebar stale until restart — possibly related to case B).
• The data the sidebar would need clearly exists: the scheduled-tasks MCP exposes taskId/lastRunAt, and the session-management MCP lists the spawned sessions (including while running). This is purely a surfacing/labeling gap.
• Workarounds in use: asking another Claude session to poll the session API; reading the files the background session writes; claude --resume from the project directory after completion.

[sachi0223]

Still broken as of desktop 2.1.208 (macOS). The Routines section reappeared briefly yesterday and vanished again today. My 6 scheduled tasks all run fine on the backend, so this is purely a sidebar rendering issue. Please don't remove this panel — it's the only at-a-glance view of scheduled routines, and losing it makes them effectively invisible. A fix or even a settings toggle to force-show the section would be appreciated.

[Atarinside]

Same on Windows (app 1.30096.1, build 194d93, 2026-08-13).

In the sidebar's "Recents / Discussions & tasks" list, chats and Cowork tasks now show identical round bullets — no icon, badge, or separator to tell them apart. The typed distinction only remains in the full "All conversations" view with the type filter. This is a regression: the sidebar previously showed distinct icons.

Cross-platform (original reports are on macOS 1.15962.1, I'm on Windows 1.30096.1), so this looks like a UI/rollout change rather than a local issue. Related/duplicate reports: #71787, #67992, #51517, and the earlier closed #54524.

Blocking for day-to-day use: with many chats and tasks sharing similar names, they're impossible to tell apart at a glance. Please restore a visual indicator (distinct icon, "Chat"/"Cowork" label, or section separator).