Skip to content

Add ability to unarchive / restore an archived project session #3518

@tjegbejimba

Description

@tjegbejimba

Scenario

I accidentally archived a long-running project session that I'd been using as an orchestrator (it had spawned many child sessions via cross-session messages, accumulated significant context across many turns, and had a checkpoint summarizing its state).

When I realized the mistake and tried to resume it, I couldn't find a way to bring the session back. As far as I can tell:

  • Archived sessions aren't visible in the normal project session list
  • There's no "unarchive" or "restore" action exposed in the UI or via tooling
  • The session's state still exists (history, checkpoints, branch, worktree all intact) — it just isn't reachable

The only workaround I found was to create a new session and seed its kickoff prompt with a hand-assembled context dump from the previous session's last checkpoint. That works, but:

  • It's a clone, not a resume — the new session has a different ID, so any cross-session references from child sessions still point at the dead parent
  • It requires me (or an agent) to manually reconstruct context, which is error-prone and loses fidelity
  • Any in-flight automations tied to the original session ID are orphaned

Request

Add a first-class way to unarchive / restore an archived project session, ideally:

  1. An "Archived" view or filter in the project session list
  2. A restore action that brings the session back with the same ID, branch, worktree, and history intact
  3. (Optional) Equivalent tooling exposure so agents can recover from accidental archives without the kickoff-prompt workaround

Why this matters

Archive is a one-click action and easy to hit by mistake. For short-lived sessions the loss is minor, but for long-running orchestrator/parent sessions — the exact ones most valuable to preserve — an accidental archive is currently destructive in practice even though the data is still there.

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

No one assigned

    Labels

    area:sessionsSession management, resume, history, session picker, and session state
    No fields configured for Feature.

    Projects

    No projects

    Milestone

    No milestone

    Relationships

    None yet

    Development

    No branches or pull requests

    Issue actions