How do I continue the last Claude Code session?

claude --continue

Resumes the most recent session in this directory. Short form: claude -c.

Answer

Run claude --continue in the directory where you were working. It reopens the most recent session there with its conversation intact — no picker, no arguments. Session history is stored per directory, so the same flag in a different project reopens that project's last session instead.

What it does

--continue reopens the most recent session in the directory you run it from.

claude --continue

There is nothing to choose. Claude Code takes the newest session for the current directory and restores the conversation, so you carry on where you stopped.

The short form is -c.

Session history is per directory. Running --continue in one project reopens that project's last session; running it in another reopens a different one. This is why the flag is unambiguous — "most recent" is scoped to where you are.

When to use it

This is the flag for the ordinary case: you closed the terminal, made coffee, came back, and want the same conversation.

resuming work you left an hour or a day ago
reopening after a terminal crash or a reboot
returning to a task where the context matters more than the command

If you know exactly which session you want and it is not the last one, use --resume instead.

Example

Continue in the current project:

claude --continue

The short form does the same thing:

claude -c

Because sessions are scoped to a directory, this is a per-project habit:

cd ~/work/api && claude -c      # last session for the API project
cd ~/work/website && claude -c  # a different session entirely

Common mistakes

Expecting it to work from anywhere. --continue looks in the current directory — plus any session that added this directory with /add-dir. Running it from your home directory will not find the session you started inside a project. --resume <session-id> is the one that searches across projects.

Assuming the conversation lives forever. Transcripts are kept for 30 days by default. The cleanupPeriodDays setting in settings.json changes that window.

Reaching for it after /clear. Clearing starts a new conversation with an empty context. The old one is saved rather than continued, and /resume is what gets you back to it.