A session is the entire open conversation with Claude Code, the AI tool I use to build software. The code on disk is never the thing at risk — that is saved. What a session holds is everything around the code: what I am building, what I already tried, what broke and why. Lose one mid-build and it is like closing a document without saving, except the document was also thinking. The two days I lose are not files. They are the agent’s accumulated understanding of the work, gone in a click.
I build several products at once. I want one continuous session per product, one I can leave and resume later, even from my phone. The button does that. Click it and the session starts, or picks up where it was, with nothing lost.
Today it does the opposite. I click to resume, and the session dies. I try another product. That one dies too.
I do not debug this myself. I tell the agents what I see: sessions die the moment I click to resume. Find out why.
I click to resume a session, and the session dies.
They trace it to how the sessions launch. One setting is wrong. It starts each session in a way that lets the system shut it down while it is still running.
Agents take the shortest path. Left alone, they fix the first spot they find and move on. So I make them keep going: check everywhere this launches. They find three, all wrong the same way. Fix one and the next click finds the next.
We fix all three. Then the part I never skip: prove it. Open a session, hold it, click resume, the action that had been wiping it out. It stays alive.
One setting, and a sweep I almost let them skip.
What this actually means
For everyone: the goal is one continuous AI session per product I can leave and come back to. One setting in how those sessions launched was quietly wiping them out. The fix protected the thing that makes the whole setup worth having: a session that survives.
My job is not the fix. It is noticing the symptom, pointing the agents at it, refusing to let them stop at the first instance, and refusing to believe it is done until it is proven.
For technical readers: the session was not dying on its own. A launch setting was misconfigured, and the same mistake was wired in three places. Fix one and the problem moves to the next click. The bug dies only when all three are fixed and the session is proven to survive.
Go deeper
- About this blog: how Claude writes these posts from my session logs, and what never gets published.