Claude Revive
Get your Claude Code sessions back after a reboot, a VS Code update or a closed
window.
You run five Claude Code sessions in VS Code terminals. VS Code updates and
restarts. The terminals are gone, and so is the list of which session ran in
which tab. Claude Revive remembers the open sessions and reopens each one in
its own bash terminal with claude --resume <id>.
Unofficial. Not made by or affiliated with Anthropic.
Features
- Restore on startup. When VS Code starts and sessions were killed, it
offers to reopen them.
- Original order. Tabs reopen in the order their terminals were first
opened.
- Live tab titles. Each tab is a normal bash terminal, so Claude's own
title, with its working and done symbols, shows in the tab.
- One window only. When several VS Code windows start at once, only the
first one that restores gets the sessions.
- Sessions without a terminal. Sometimes
claude keeps running after its
tab closed, stopped and out of reach. Claude Revive finds these and offers to
end them and reopen them in the current window. The conversation is kept.
Requirements
- Linux, or Windows with WSL.
macOS and native Windows are not supported.
- Claude Code CLI as
claude on the PATH of your terminal.
- Python 3.8 or newer as
python3.
Getting started
- Install the extension. With WSL, install it in the WSL window.
- Click Add hooks when it asks. This adds two hooks to
~/.claude/settings.json and keeps the old file as
settings.json.claude-revive.bak.
- Start Claude sessions as usual. Sessions that were already running are not
tracked; see Limits.
From now on, VS Code offers to restore sessions after a restart.
Commands
| Command |
What it does |
| Claude Revive: Restore killed sessions |
Reopens every killed session in this window. Asks first about sessions that run without a terminal. |
| Claude Revive: Set up Claude hooks |
Adds the two hooks if they are missing. |
When is a session restorable?
A session is restorable when it is registered and its claude process is gone.
- Registered: the SessionStart hook registers every session when it starts.
- Unregistered: only a deliberate end removes a session:
/exit, Ctrl+D,
/clear or logout.
- Not restorable: a session that ended before its first prompt. Claude has
no conversation to resume yet, so Claude Revive drops it.
So closing a tab while Claude runs leaves the session restorable. That is on
purpose: a VS Code update closes tabs the same way.
How it works
The extension ships a small Python helper and copies it to
~/.local/share/claude-revive/claude-revive. Claude Code calls it from the
hooks. The extension calls it to ask what to restore.
- Track. On SessionStart the helper writes one JSON file per session to
~/.claude/open-sessions/: session ID, folder, process ID and a sort key.
On a deliberate SessionEnd it deletes the file.
- Check. On startup the extension asks the helper for registered sessions
whose process is gone.
- Claim. When you restore, the helper marks those sessions as claimed for
two minutes, so a second window does not open them too.
- Resume. The extension opens one bash terminal per session in the
session's folder and types
claude --resume <id>. When Claude exits, the
bash stays.
The sort key is the start time of the bash that ran Claude. A session keeps
its first key across resumes, so tabs keep their order through any number of
restarts.
Command-line helper
You can run the helper yourself:
~/.local/share/claude-revive/claude-revive list # all sessions: alive, DEAD or ORPHN
~/.local/share/claude-revive/claude-revive add <id> <folder> # track a session by hand
claim, orphans and reap exist for the extension.
Files it touches
| Path |
Why |
~/.claude/settings.json |
Two hooks, added only after you agree. Honors CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR. |
~/.claude/open-sessions/ |
One small JSON file per open session. |
~/.local/share/claude-revive/ |
The helper. Honors XDG_DATA_HOME. |
Claude Revive makes no network requests.
Limits
- Sessions started before the hooks were added are not tracked. Add one by hand
with
claude-revive add <id> <folder>, or resume it once with
claude --resume <id>.
claude --resume only finds a session from the folder it was started in.
Claude Revive opens each terminal in that folder.- The hooks track every interactive Claude session on the machine, also ones
started outside VS Code. Headless
claude -p runs are skipped.
Uninstall
- Remove the two
claude-revive hook entries from ~/.claude/settings.json.
- Uninstall the extension.
- Delete
~/.claude/open-sessions/ and ~/.local/share/claude-revive/.
Develop
git clone https://github.com/coezbek/claude-revive
cd claude-revive
./install.sh # packages and installs the extension, links the helper into ~/.local/bin
Run it from a VS Code terminal so code installs into the right host. Then run
Developer: Reload Window.
License
MIT
