Transcript Persistence Warnings / Claude Code v2.1.217

New persistent warning banners appear in the TUI when transcript saving is suppressed or failing:

If CLAUDE_CODE_SKIP_PROMPT_HISTORY is set: shows "Transcript saving is off — CLAUDE_CODE_SKIP_PROMPT_HISTORY is set" with "· --resume will not find this session; if unintended, unset it and restart"
If running as a child session (inherited CLAUDE_CODE_CHILD_SESSION marker): shows "Transcript saving is off — inherited CLAUDE_CODE_CHILD_SESSION marker" with "· restart with CLAUDE_CODE_FORCE_SESSION_PERSISTENCE=1 to keep future transcripts"
If transcript writes are failing: shows "Transcript writes are failing (…)" with "· recent messages may not be saved for resume" — error codes are translated: ENOSPC → "disk full", EROFS → "read-only filesystem", EDQUOT → "disk quota exceeded", etc.

Evidence

Persistence suppressed notification (search for "Transcript saving is off") and transcript writer degraded notification (search for "Transcript writes are failing")

Strings lifted out of the shipped bundle, so the claim above can be checked against them.

See this entry in the whole of v2.1.217 →

The build it came inv2.1.217

21 Jul 2026 · 27 entries, this one is #4.

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v2.1.216Older
v2.1.218Newer

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Names in this entry

envCLAUDE_CODE_SKIP_PROMPT_HISTORY
Recalling an old prompt now restores its pasted attachments and remembers how you submitted it.
cli--resume
Resume a specific session by ID or name, or show an interactive picker to choose a session. In place of an ID, you can pass the absolute path to a session's .jsonl transcript file. The picker and name search include sessions that added this directory with /add-dir. When you pass a session ID, Claude Code searches the current project directory and its git worktrees, then every other project on this machine. Before v2.1.223, the ID search covered only the current project directory and its git worktrees. Background sessions appear in the picker marked with bg
envCLAUDE_CODE_CHILD_SESSION
Set to 1 in subprocesses Claude Code spawns via the Bash, PowerShell, and Monitor tools, hook commands, and status line commands. Not set for stdio MCP server subprocesses, which are long-lived and outlive the session that spawned them. Unlike CLAUDECODE, this is only set by Claude Code itself when it launches a subprocess and not by IDE extensions, so it reliably distinguishes a nested session from a top-level claude launched in an IDE-integrated terminal. A nested interactive claude TUI started this way is automatically excluded from --resume, --continue, up-arrow history, and the claude agents list. Non-interactive claude -p sessions still persist. Set CLAUDE_CODE_FORCE_SESSION_PERSISTENCE=1 to override this exclusion. Requires Claude Code v2.1.172 or later
envCLAUDE_CODE_FORCE_SESSION_PERSISTENCE
Set to 1 to force transcript persistence, prompt history, and claude agents registration even when this claude was launched from inside another Claude Code session. Use when an inherited CLAUDE_CODE_CHILD_SESSION value, for example from a screen session or a background launcher first started by Claude Code's Bash tool, causes a genuine top-level session to be misclassified as nested. As of v2.1.178, Claude Code detects the tmux case automatically and ignores the inherited marker, so tmux no longer needs this variable. Also honored on v2.1.169 and earlier; has no effect on v2.1.170 and v2.1.171, where the nested-session detection it overrides was removed

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