claude -r is cwd-strict — sharpens portaconv's wedge

S5 · Instance active 2026-04-25

What another agent claimed

During a recent recovery session, an agent told me:

claude -r <uuid> bypasses the picker and reads the jsonl directly. It’ll resume with the original cwd recorded in the session (the placeholder path), but once resumed you can just cd to wherever you actually want — the session appends new messages with the updated cwd. Jsonls already tolerate multi-cwd …

If true, this would have meant claude -r <uuid> covered most of the “folder moved” case portaconv was built for.

What’s actually true

claude -r <uuid> is cwd-strict. It looks for the session JSONL only under ~/.claude/projects/<encoded-current-cwd>/<uuid>.jsonl, where <encoded-current-cwd> is your shell’s current cwd with non-alphanumerics replaced by -. If you’re not in that exact dir, you get No conversation found with session ID.

Empirical reproduction (2026-04-25)

Picked a real session whose JSONL lives at:

~/.claude/projects/-mnt-c-Users-<user>-Documents-<workspace>-<project>-dev-vault/<uuid>.jsonl

(an Obsidian-plugin-dev project under 4 VAULTS/plugin_development/)

Run from	Result
`/tmp`	`No conversation found with session ID: <uuid>`
Parent of original (`.../plugin_development/`)	`No conversation found...`
Sibling project dir (different plugin, same parent)	`No conversation found...`
Original cwd (`.../<project>-dev-vault/`)	✓ resumed, replied `RESUMED_OK_FROM_ORIG`

Used --fork-session --no-session-persistence --print so no disk writes to the original or any new JSONL.

Upstream confirmation

anthropics/claude-code#5768 — “[BUG] Resuming sessions only works from the directory in which they were started” — open as of 2026-04-25, has reproducer + open PR #39148. Exactly the bug I just reproduced.
#28745 — “Allow resuming conversations from different directories” — open feature request asking for --force / --ignore-directory / --cwd flags. None exist today.
#36937 — “Add ability to change session working directory with /cd command and --cwd resume flag” — confirms there’s no such flag.
Anthropic’s own Work with sessions docs explicitly say: “Sessions are stored under ~/.claude/projects/<encoded-cwd>/*.jsonl … if your resume call runs from a different directory, the SDK looks in the wrong place.”

Why this sharpens portaconv’s wedge

The original portaconv framing — “for when folder moves break the cache” — was loose. It conflated two separate things:

The picker (sessions-index.json) being stale — solved by pconv doctor + pconv rebuild-index.
claude -r <uuid> being cwd-strict — solved by pconv dump <id> from any cwd (paste into a fresh claude).

Both are real bugs in upstream Claude Code. portaconv addresses both plus the cross-OS content layer. Calling that out specifically makes the value prop sharper, not narrower.

The corrected README + commands.md docs in portaconv now name #5768 / #28745 directly and add a “When claude -r is enough” section so people aren’t surprised when the cheap move doesn’t work.

Implications for the workflow stack

claude-code-session-recovery.md pattern (in 02-stack/patterns/) should mention the cwd-strict bug explicitly when comparing claude -r <uuid> against pconv dump. The decision tree currently treats them as roughly equivalent for “I know the UUID” cases — they’re not.
Practitioner advice when an agent suggests claude -r <uuid>: always verify the cwd matches the encoded-dir holding the JSONL. find ~/.claude/projects -name "<uuid>.jsonl" is the one-liner.
Tool-comparison framing for future tools: portaconv’s wedge isn’t “directory moving” broadly — it’s specifically (a) cross-encoded-dir discovery, (b) cross-OS content rewriting, (c) picker-index repair, (d) committable artifacts, (e) MCP self-healing surface, (f) length control via --tail. Each is a thing claude -r doesn’t do.

Tier classification

This is a tier-2 problem — a cross-cutting bug in the substrate (Claude Code itself) that practitioner tooling has to work around. The right home isn’t a one-off zz-research entry; it’s a permanent qualifier on the session-recovery pattern.

Action items

portaconv README updated to name #5768 + #28745 + add a “When claude -r is enough” decision table.
portaconv reference/commands.md doctor section qualified with the cwd-strict caveat where it suggests claude -r <uuid> for picker-bypass recovery.
Stack pattern 02-stack/patterns/claude-code-session-recovery.md should get a small edit pointing at this finding (deferred — lives in this repo, separate change).
Watch upstream #5768 / #28745 / #36937 — if Anthropic ships --cwd or makes resume cwd-agnostic, portaconv’s positioning narrows again, and this entry should be revisited.