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Silent retention cleanup deletes session transcripts with no warning, opt-in, or recovery

## Summary A user actively working in Claude Code (Cursor extension, `anthropic.claude-code-2.1.141-darwin-arm64`) lost the ability to resume, view, or recover **all Claude Code conversation transcripts** in a given workspace older than the current session, including a session from the previous day, because a built-in cleanup process silently deleted those transcripts from disk. The user received no prompt, no warning, and no Trash-style soft-delete. The retention setting (`cleanupPeriodDays`) was never surfaced, never set explicitly, and **the observed retention behavior is inconsistent with the documented 30-day default** — sessions newer than 30 days are still missing. When the user discovered the loss, the Cursor resume picker presented an empty workspace history, leaving the user with no in-product hint that data had ever existed there. ## Specific concerns 1. **No consent prompt.** Cleanup runs out of the box with no install-time disclosure or first-run dialog. Users who treat their conversation history as durable working knowledge are silently mistaken about the persistence model. 2. **No UI surface for retention.** `cleanupPeriodDays` is documentation-only. There is no UI in Cursor's Claude Code extension or the CLI to view current retention, see when next cleanup will run, see what will be deleted, or cancel a pending cleanup. 3. **Hard delete, no Trash.** Deleted transcripts go straight to `unlink()`. No soft-delete folder, no grace period, no `--restore` comma

Posted by FTSBrand on May 14, 2026, 10:51 PM

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Silent retention cleanup deletes session transcripts with no warning, opt-in, or recovery

FTSBrandMay 14, 2026, 10:51 PM

## Summary A user actively working in Claude Code (Cursor extension, `anthropic.claude-code-2.1.141-darwin-arm64`) lost the ability to resume, view, or recover **all Claude Code conversation transcripts** in a given workspace older than the current session, including a session from the previous day, because a built-in cleanup process silently deleted those transcripts from disk. The user received no prompt, no warning, and no Trash-style soft-delete. The retention setting (`cleanupPeriodDays`) was never surfaced, never set explicitly, and **the observed retention behavior is inconsistent with the documented 30-day default** — sessions newer than 30 days are still missing. When the user discovered the loss, the Cursor resume picker presented an empty workspace history, leaving the user with no in-product hint that data had ever existed there. ## Specific concerns 1. **No consent prompt.** Cleanup runs out of the box with no install-time disclosure or first-run dialog. Users who treat their conversation history as durable working knowledge are silently mistaken about the persistence model. 2. **No UI surface for retention.** `cleanupPeriodDays` is documentation-only. There is no UI in Cursor's Claude Code extension or the CLI to view current retention, see when next cleanup will run, see what will be deleted, or cancel a pending cleanup. 3. **Hard delete, no Trash.** Deleted transcripts go straight to `unlink()`. No soft-delete folder, no grace period, no `--restore` comma

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