[FEATURE] See sessions across the Claude accounts I own on one machine

# Feature request: see sessions across the Claude accounts I own on one machine

**Product:** Claude Desktop (Claude Code desktop app)
**Platform:** Windows 11 Pro 10.0.26200, x64
**Filed:** 2026-08-27

## The workflow this is about

I run five Claude accounts on one machine, against one repository. Each is isolated
with a launcher that sets two things:

```
$env:CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR = 'C:\Users\\.claude-account-N' # Claude Code config + transcripts
--user-data-dir=C:\Users\\.claude-desktop-N # Electron profile + app sign-in
```

That part works well and I am not asking to change it.

The reason for several accounts is usage limits. When one account reaches its weekly
limit, I move the work to another account and carry on. The work itself is a set of
long-running sessions on one codebase, so continuity across that switch is the whole
point.

## The problem

Each account's session sidebar shows only that account's own sessions. After a switch
I cannot see, search, or open anything the previous account was doing, even though it
is the same machine, the same user, and the same repository.

So the sessions I most need at the moment of a switch are the ones that become
invisible at exactly that moment.

## What I verified before filing

I first assumed the sidebar was backed by the per-profile directory
`\claude-code-sessions\`, and that sharing that directory between
accounts would give a unified list. That is wrong, and I would rather record the
measurement than let someone else repeat it.

I searched every local session store on the machine (six stores, 425 records) for
titles that were visibly rendering in one account's sidebar:

| Title rendering in the sidebar | Present in any local store? |
|---|---|
| (4 titles) | yes |
| (4 other titles) | **no, not in any of the six** |

Four cards render with no local record behind them anywhere on disk. I also copied a
session record from account 1 into account 5's store, along with its `.jsonl`
transcript, and the card never appeared.

Conclusion: the sidebar is the account's server-side session list. The local
`claude-code-sessions` files are a cache, not the source. No local configuration can
produce a cross-account view.

The grouping headers agree. One account's sidebar groups sessions under labels like
`MessageFoundry - `, which is a server-side workspace grouping rather than a
directory on disk.

## What I am asking for

An opt-in way to see sessions from other Claude accounts that the same person owns on
the same machine. Roughly, in order of how useful each would be to me:

1. **A cross-account view in the sidebar.** A toggle or a filter that includes
sessions from the machine's other configured accounts, clearly labelled with which
account each belongs to. Read-only would already be a large improvement.

2. **Open a session from another account read-only.** The transcript is already on
disk under that account's `CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR`. Being able to read it without
signing out and signing back in would cover most of my need.

3. **Transfer or hand off a session to another account.** This is what I actually do
by hand today, and it is the expensive part. When an account hits its limit I
reconstruct each session under the next account from files the previous sessions
wrote. A supported handoff would remove that work entirely.

Any one of these solves the switch. The first is the smallest.

## Why not just use one account

Usage limits. The multi-account setup exists to keep work moving past a weekly cap,
which is a supported way to buy more capacity. The tooling treats each account as a
separate world, so the cost of that capacity is losing continuity at the exact moment
the switch happens.

## Related

anthropics/claude-code#90172 covers a different defect in the same area: the desktop
app self-restarts to update, kills the Claude Code CLI child processes, and relaunches
without the launcher's environment, so restarted sessions register into the default
config directory instead of the per-account one. That bug and this request touch the
same multi-account seam from opposite sides. Fixing 90172 does not address this.

## Environment

- Claude Desktop 1.37937.3, bundled CLI 2.1.246
- Windows 11 Pro 10.0.26200
- Five accounts, isolated by `CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR` plus `--user-data-dir`
- One shared repository and git worktree set

Start with the Claude Desktop session sidebar and the server-side session list described in the report; compare them with the per-account CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR and claude-code-sessions cache. Determine the account-isolation and read-only access boundaries before choosing an implementation path. Done means an opt-in view can show sessions from configured accounts with clear account labels, or the supported handoff behavior is explicitly defined.

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