[BUG] No working mechanism to review previous context after compaction, plan-mode clear, or branch navigation — data preserved but UI inaccessible

## Summary **Claude Code has no working way to review conversation history that has been cleared or compacted.** The full data is always preserved in `transcript.jsonl`, but the TUI provides zero functional paths to access it. This affects three distinct scenarios: 1. **Post-compaction**: Ctrl+O enters "transcript mode" (mislabeled as "history"), which shows only post-compaction messages. Ctrl+E toggles the status bar text but reveals no hidden content. Pre-compaction conversation is **inaccessible**. 2. **Post-plan-mode "clear context"**: Creates a new session with the plan injected as the first message. The exploration conversation that informed the plan is in a separate JSONL with no UI link back. 3. **Branch navigation**: Right-arrow in the `/resume` picker (which used to allow browsing conversation branches) does nothing. Branch data is intact in JSONL with correct `parentUuid` linkage. **This is blocking.** Users cannot audit Claude's reasoning after compaction, cannot review the exploration that led to a plan, and cannot navigate between conversation branches. The only workaround is manually parsing raw JSONL files, which is not a reasonable expectation for a TUI tool. These bugs also compound with unfixed session discovery bugs in #26123 (closed prematurely, 49 👍) — index staleness and `/rename` names not showing in picker. The resume picker is the single gateway to all historical context and it's degraded at every level: can't find sessions, can't identify them,

Posted by scapeshift-ojones on Feb 20, 2026, 9:36 PM

Tags

• ux (Other)

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