A native Linux app to manage Claude Code sessions

A developer built Claude Session Manager, a native Linux desktop app that provides a proper interface for managing Claude Code sessions. The app uses VTE, the production-grade embeddable terminal widget behind GNOME Terminal, to handle Claude Code's heavy TUI with alternate screens and constant redraws. The tool never touches Claude Code's own data, storing names and favorites in its own config file while keeping transcripts read-only.

If you use Claude Code https://claude.com/claude-code daily, you know the problem: after a few weeks you have dozens of sessions scattered across every project you've touched. They live as JSONL files under ~/.claude/projects/ , named by UUID. Which one was the JWT refactor? Which one is still mid-task? claude --resume shows you a picker for the current directory — but there's no overview of everything, no naming, no "this one matters, pin it". So I built Claude Session Manager — a native Linux desktop app that gives Claude Code sessions a proper home. GitHub: https://github.com/r4nd3l/claude-session-manager https://github.com/r4nd3l/claude-session-manager claude --resume <id in the session's original project directory, inside your own shellImportantly: it never touches Claude Code's own data . Names, favorites, everything app-side lives in its own config file. Transcripts are read-only to this app unless you explicitly trash one — and that goes to the system trash, recoverable . I wanted a native app, and the deciding factor turned out to be one component: the terminal widget . Claude Code is a heavy TUI — alternate screens, spinners, constant redraws. A half-baked terminal emulator widget will mangle it. On Linux there's exactly one production-grade embeddable terminal: VTE , the widget behind GNOME Terminal and Ptyxis. That decision cascaded into the rest of the stack: AdwTabView / AdwTabBar gave me the tab system basically for free, AdwOverlaySplitView the sidebar layout 1. Some libadwaita types are final. class SessionSidebar Adw.ToolbarView compiles fine and explodes at runtime with could not create new GType . AdwToolbarView can't be subclassed — wrap it in a Gtk.Box instead. 2. GtkListBox headers belong to rows. I implemented collapsible project groups by filtering out the group's rows... and the group 3. Bind properties, don't rebuild lists. The first version rebuilt the whole sidebar on every change — fine at 10 sessions, scroll-position-destroying at 50+ with live file monitoring. The fix was a proper model layer: a GObject item per session with bindable properties, reused across refreshes. Renames, stars and status dots now update in place, and the list is only re-spliced when the order actually changes. sessions.py transcript discovery + parsing pure Python, fully testable state.py app-side persistence names, favorites, settings store.py single source of truth: threaded scans, file monitors, diffing sidebar.py the session list widget window.py tabs + actions + composition The data layer is GTK-free, which means the test suite runs on a bare python:3.12-slim container in CI — no display server, no GTK packages. There's a .deb on the release page https://github.com/r4nd3l/claude-session-manager/releases/latest : sudo apt install ./claude-session-manager 0.1.0 all.deb Or run from source Fedora/Arch package names in the README : git clone https://github.com/r4nd3l/claude-session-manager.git cd claude-session-manager python3 -m claude session manager It's GPL-3, unofficial, and not affiliated with Anthropic. Issues and PRs welcome — the next feature on my list is transcript peek : reading the last few messages of a session in the details dialog, so you can identify a session without resuming it. If you try it, I'd genuinely like to know what breaks on your distro. 🐧 Enjoying the content? If you'd like to support my work and keep the ideas flowing, consider buying me a coffee Your support means the world to me