agent-signals

034. The Claude task folder keeps the first session ID of the process

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Date
2026-10-30
Agents
Claude Code
Measured on
real machine

Measured

2026-10-30, Claude Code 2.1.314 with --model haiku, on Linux (Debian 13, x64), in a private tmux server with a throwaway HOME. The scenario scenarios/claude/dialog-states.sh (three runs) listed the open files of the process at each step from /proc/<pid>/fd, and listed the folders and files below /tmp/claude-<uid>/<project key>/. Measured on: real machine.

What was measured

  1. After the start, and after a question from the agent, the process held no folder below /tmp/claude-<uid>/ open. Only /tmp/claude-<uid>/<project key>/<session id>/scratchpad existed.
  2. The first Bash tool call made /tmp/claude-<uid>/<project key>/<session id>/tasks, and the process then held it open. In run 2 and run 3 that call was a foreground ls, not a background task. So a Bash call opens the folder, not only a background task.
  3. A background task wrote its output to tasks/<task id>.output. The task ID is the backgroundTaskId of the hooks (fact 031).
  4. After /clear, the pid file and the hooks named the new session ID (fact 023, fact 024). The process still held the tasks folder of the first session ID open. The new session got only a scratchpad folder.
  5. A background task that started after /clear wrote its output to the tasks folder of the first session ID, not to a folder of the new session ID.
  6. The folders stay after the process ends. The scenario cleanup deletes them.

Mechanism

The process makes its task folder one time, with the session ID that it has at that time. /clear does not move the folder.

A reader that takes the session ID from the open task folder (fact 025) gets the first session ID of the process. After /clear, that ID is wrong. It is correct only when the process has had one session. The pid file (fact 023) gives the current session ID.

Incident

None.

Screens

None.

Not measured