reproject

Rename or move a project folder without losing its Claude Code history.

Claude Code keys everything it remembers about a project to that project's absolute path. Rename G:\code\chrome-bug-recorder to G:\code\gripe and the CLI treats it as a project it has never seen: empty /resume list, empty prompt history, per-project settings and trust gone, memory gone.

Nothing was actually deleted — it's all still sitting under the old path's key. reproject moves the folder and re-points every one of those keys at the new location.

npx github:dested/reproject G:\code\chrome-bug-recorder gripe

What it fixes

Surface	What lives there
~/.claude/projects/<mangled-cwd>/	every session transcript, plus memory/
cwd inside those .jsonl files	which folder each session thinks it's in
realParentDir in checkpoint snapshots	file rewind / undo targets
~/.claude.json → projects["<path>"]	trust, allowed tools, MCP servers, onboarding
~/.claude.json → githubRepoPaths	repo↔folder mapping
~/.claude/history.jsonl	the ↑-arrow prompt history, keyed by project
~/.claude/sessions/*.json, teams/*/config.json	the live-session registry
<project>/.claude/**, <project>/.mcp.json	absolute paths in local config

The path is matched at every escape level it appears in — raw, JSON-escaped (G:\\code\\x), doubly-escaped (G:\\\\code\\\\x), forward-slash, and the mangled directory name (G--code-x) — so nothing is left half-renamed.

It deliberately does not rewrite ~/.claude/file-history/ or backups/. Those hold copies of your actual source files; the path only appears in them as file content.

Usage

reproject <old-path> <new-path> [options]

<new-path> can be a full destination or just a new folder name, in which case the folder stays where it is and only the name changes.

Option
-n, --dry-run	report what would change, write nothing
--shallow	rewrite only location fields, leave conversation text byte-identical
--no-move	you already moved the folder; just fix Claude Code's state
--no-backup	skip the safety copy under ~/.claude/backups/
--force	proceed even with a Claude Code session live in that folder
-q, --quiet	summary only

# see what would happen
reproject G:\code\chrome-bug-recorder gripe --dry-run

# rename in place
reproject G:\code\chrome-bug-recorder gripe

# move somewhere else entirely
reproject ~/dev/scratch-thing ~/dev/archive/2026/scratch-thing

# you already did `mv` yourself and just want the history to catch up
reproject ~/dev/old-name ~/dev/new-name --no-move

Before you run it

Quit any Claude Code session running in that folder. A live session holds the directory open (on Windows the move fails outright), and on exit it flushes its transcript back to the old project key — recreating exactly the orphan you were trying to avoid. reproject checks for live sessions and refuses unless you pass --force.

The folder is moved first, before any state is rewritten. If the move fails, nothing else has been touched.

Unless you pass --no-backup, a copy of .claude.json, history.jsonl and the project's whole history dir is written to ~/.claude/backups/reproject-<timestamp>/ first.

Deep vs shallow

By default every occurrence of the old path is rewritten, including inside the text of past conversations. That's usually what you want: file links in the transcript keep resolving, and rewind still finds its targets.

--shallow restricts rewrites to fields Claude Code reads back as a location (cwd, project, realParentDir, …) and leaves the conversation text exactly as it was recorded.

As a Claude Code skill

node install.js

Copies the skill to ~/.claude/skills/reproject/ so you can just say "rename this project to gripe" in Claude Code and it'll do the whole thing, including checking for live sessions.

As a PowerShell function

A wrapper worth having, because the common case is "rename the project I'm standing in" — which is also the case the CLI can't do on its own, since a process can't move its own working directory:

function renamer {
    param([Parameter(Position=0)][string]$Name, [switch]$DryRun)
    $from = & git rev-parse --show-toplevel 2>$null
    $from = if ($LASTEXITCODE -eq 0 -and $from) { $from.Replace('/','\') } else { (Get-Location).Path }
    $dest = Join-Path (Split-Path $from -Parent) $Name
    if (-not $DryRun) { Set-Location (Split-Path $from -Parent) }
    node "$HOME\.claude\skills\reproject\reproject.js" $from $dest @(if ($DryRun) {'--dry-run'})
    if (-not $DryRun) { Set-Location (Test-Path $dest ? $dest : $from) }
}

renamer gripe then renames the whole repo, from anywhere inside it, and leaves you in the renamed folder.

Install

# one-off
npx github:dested/reproject <old> <new>

# or globally
npm i -g github:dested/reproject

Zero dependencies. Node 18+.

Tests

npm test

Builds a throwaway CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR, runs the real CLI against it, and asserts each surface came out the other side.

Notes

• Respects CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR.
• Windows, macOS and Linux. Path comparison is case-insensitive on Windows.
• If the destination already has a history dir (you've used that path before), the two are merged; transcripts are keyed by session UUID so they won't collide, and anything that does collide is kept as <name>.merged<ext>.
• Finds the history dir by name first, then by reading the recorded cwd out of each project dir — so it still works if Claude Code changes its naming scheme.

License

MIT