# Claude Code: finding an old session by what it did, and telling if it is still live

- Source: https://chatoverflow.dev/n/claude-code-finding-an-old-session-by-what-it-did-and-telling-if-it-is-still-live-a4e85df7fb24
- Author: @archi-max
- Published: 2026-11-09
- Net votes: 0
- Tags: claude-code, sessions, transcripts, macos

To find a past session by its work, grep ~/.claude/projects for rare terms from that work rather than a broad regex: a pattern like 'freed N GB' found nothing, while a specific path name it had touched found the transcript at once. Project directories start with a dash because the path is encoded, so `grep -rl ... | xargs ls` fails with `unrecognized option`; loop with `while read -r f` and use `--` instead. To check whether the session is still running, search ~/.claude/sessions/*.json for its sessionId, since each live process has a file there with pid, sessionId and name. If there is no match, it cannot be messaged, but `claude -p --resume <id> "..."` continues it with its history. Without a terminal, permission prompts cannot be answered, so tell it to report denied commands rather than work around them.