session-recovery
Diagnose and recover Claude Code session issues including missing conversations, corrupted sessions, and session file problems. Use whenever the.
What this skill does
# Claude Code Session Recovery Skill
> **Self-Evolving Skill**: This skill improves through use. If instructions are wrong, parameters drifted, or a workaround was needed — fix this file immediately, don't defer. Only update for real, reproducible issues.
## When to Use This Skill
Use this skill when:
- "No conversations found to resume" when running `claude -r`
- New conversations not creating session files
- Sessions appearing in wrong locations (`/tmp/` instead of `~/.claude/projects/`)
- Session history missing after environment changes
- IDE/terminal settings affecting session creation
- Need to migrate or recover 600+ legacy sessions
## Quick Reference
## Official Session Storage
**Standard Location:** `~/.claude/projects/`
**Structure:**
```
~/.claude/projects/
├── -home-username-my-project/ # Encoded absolute path
│ └── 364695f1-13e7-4cbb-ad4b-0eb416feb95d.jsonl
└── -tmp-another-project/
└── a8e39846-ceca-421d-b4bd-3ba0eb1b3145.jsonl
```
**Format:** One JSON event per line (JSONL), UUID-based filenames
## Critical Pitfall: HOME Variable
### Problem
Claude Code uses `$HOME` environment variable to determine session storage location. If `$HOME` is incorrect, sessions go to wrong directory or disappear.
### Symptoms
- `claude -r` shows "No conversations found to resume"
- New conversations work but files don't appear in expected location
- Sessions found in `/tmp/` or other unexpected paths
- Works on one machine but not another
### Diagnosis
```bash
/usr/bin/env bash << 'PREFLIGHT_EOF'
# Step 1: Check current HOME
echo "Current HOME: $HOME"
# Step 2: Check system expectation
echo "Expected HOME: $(getent passwd $(whoami) | cut -d: -f6)"
# Step 3: Find where Claude is actually writing
find /tmp -name "*.jsonl" -path "*/.claude/projects/*" 2>/dev/null
PREFLIGHT_EOF
```
---
## Reference Documentation
For detailed diagnostic steps and solutions, see:
- [Troubleshooting Guide](./TROUBLESHOOTING.md) - Detailed diagnostic procedures and fixes
---
## Troubleshooting
| Issue | Cause | Solution |
| ---------------------------- | ------------------------------ | ---------------------------------------------------- |
| "No conversations found" | Wrong HOME variable | Verify `$HOME` matches expected user directory |
| Sessions in /tmp/ | HOME set incorrectly | Fix HOME in shell profile, restart terminal |
| Session files missing | Disk space or permissions | Check `~/.claude/projects/` permissions and disk |
| Wrong project sessions shown | Path encoding mismatch | Check encoded path matches current working directory |
| Sessions not persisting | File system issues | Verify write permissions to `~/.claude/projects/` |
| IDE sessions separate | Different HOME per environment | Ensure consistent HOME across terminal and IDE |
| Legacy sessions not visible | Migration not complete | See migration section in TROUBLESHOOTING.md |
| UUID filename corruption | Incomplete writes | Check for partial .jsonl files, remove corrupt ones |
## Post-Execution Reflection
After this skill completes, check before closing:
1. **Did the command succeed?** — If not, fix the instruction or error table that caused the failure.
2. **Did parameters or output change?** — If the underlying tool's interface drifted, update Usage examples and Parameters table to match.
3. **Was a workaround needed?** — If you had to improvise (different flags, extra steps), update this SKILL.md so the next invocation doesn't need the same workaround.
Only update if the issue is real and reproducible — not speculative.
Related in AI Agents
skill-development
IncludedComprehensive meta-skill for creating, managing, validating, auditing, and distributing Claude Code skills and slash commands (unified in v2.1.3+). Provides skill templates, creation workflows, validation patterns, audit checklists, naming conventions, YAML frontmatter guidance, progressive disclosure examples, and best practices lookup. Use when creating new skills, validating existing skills, auditing skill quality, understanding skill architecture, needing skill templates, learning about YAML frontmatter requirements, progressive disclosure patterns, tool restrictions (allowed-tools), skill composition, skill naming conventions, troubleshooting skill activation issues, creating custom slash commands, configuring command frontmatter, using command arguments ($ARGUMENTS, $1, $2), bash execution in commands, file references in commands, command namespacing, plugin commands, MCP slash commands, Skill tool configuration, or deciding between skills vs slash commands. Delegates to docs-management skill for official documentation.
reprompter
IncludedTransform messy prompts into well-structured, effective prompts — single or multi-agent. Use when: "reprompt", "reprompt this", "clean up this prompt", "structure my prompt", rough text needing XML tags and best practices, "reprompter teams", "repromptception", "run with quality", "smart run", "smart agents", multi-agent tasks, audits, parallel work, anything going to agent teams. Don't use when: simple Q&A, pure chat, immediate execution-only tasks. See "Don't Use When" section for details. Outputs: Structured XML/Markdown prompt, quality score (before/after), optional team brief + per-agent sub-prompts, agent team output files. Success criteria: Single mode quality score ≥ 7/10; Repromptception per-agent prompt quality score 8+/10; all required sections present, actionable and specific.
adaptive-compaction
IncludedAdaptive add-on policy and recovery layer that decides WHEN to compact, prune, snapshot, or fork -- replacing fixed-percent auto-compaction across Claude Code, Codex, and MCP-capable hosts. Trigger on auto-compact timing or damage: "when should I compact", "is it safe to compact now or start a fresh session", "auto-compact fires too early/mid-task", "switching to an unrelated task but the window still has space", "context rot", "answers get worse the longer the session runs", "the agent forgot the plan or my decisions after it summarized", "add a layer on top that manages context without changing the agent", raising autoCompactWindow to give the policy room, or installing/tuning a cross-tool compaction policy or PreCompact hook -- even when "compaction" is never said but the problem is context-window pressure or post-summarization memory loss. Do NOT use to summarize a conversation, build RAG, write a summarization prompt (decides WHEN not HOW), or answer max-context-length trivia.
agent-skill-creator
IncludedCreate cross-platform agent skills from workflow descriptions. Activates when users ask to create an agent, automate a repetitive workflow, create a custom skill, or need advanced agent creation. Triggers on phrases like create agent for, automate workflow, create skill for, every day I have to, daily I need to, turn process into agent, need to automate, create a cross-platform skill, validate this skill, export this skill, migrate this skill. Supports single skills, multi-agent suites, transcript processing, template-based creation, interactive configuration, cross-platform export, and spec validation.
llm-wiki
IncludedUse when building or maintaining a persistent personal knowledge base (second brain) in Obsidian where an LLM incrementally ingests sources, updates entity/concept pages, maintains cross-references, and keeps a synthesis current. Triggers include "second brain", "Obsidian wiki", "personal knowledge management", "ingest this paper/article/book", "build a research wiki", "compound knowledge", "Memex", or whenever the user wants knowledge to accumulate across sessions instead of being re-derived by RAG on every query.
skill-master
IncludedAgent Skills authoring, evaluation, and optimization. Create, edit, validate, benchmark, and improve skills following the agentskills.io specification. Use when designing SKILL.md files, structuring skill folders (references, scripts, assets), ingesting external documentation into skills, running trigger evals, benchmarking skill quality, optimizing descriptions, or performing blind A/B comparisons. Keywords: agentskills.io, SKILL.md, skill authoring, eval, benchmark, trigger optimization.