The Claude Code folder that keeps everything you type, in plain text

Open `~/.claude/projects/` and count: every session you've had with Claude Code is there, in plain text, unencrypted. The prompts, the responses, and the token you pasted without thinking. 30 days by default.

Claude Code's ~/.claude/projects/ folder keeps every session as an unencrypted .jsonl: 548 conversations and 541 MB in plain text, with a pasted token in the clear, and the cleanupPeriodDays control to shorten the 30-day retention

TL;DR Every Claude Code session is saved as a .jsonl file in plain text under ~/.claude/projects/ (your prompts, the responses, and whatever you pasted, tokens included). By default they live 30 days. Shorten retention with cleanupPeriodDays in settings.json, or turn writing off entirely with CLAUDE_CODE_SKIP_PROMPT_HISTORY. It's the same data that powers --resume and Rewind.

I opened my ~/.claude/projects/ folder and found 548 conversations, 541 MB, 14 projects. All in plain text. Every prompt I've typed, every response, every secret I pasted without thinking, sitting there, unencrypted. It's not a bug: it's exactly what makes resuming a session and rewinding possible. But it's worth knowing where it lives and how long it stays.

Where it lives

~/.claude/projects/<project-path>/<session-id>.jsonl

One folder per project (the path's / turned into -), one .jsonl per session, and each line is a JSON event: your prompt, the response, every tool call. Unencrypted. It's what --resume and Rewind with checkpoints read from.

See it for yourself

du -sh ~/.claude/projects/                          # how much it takes up
find ~/.claude/projects -name '*.jsonl' | wc -l     # how many conversations

What to do

1. Shorten retention

In ~/.claude/settings.json:

{ "cleanupPeriodDays": 7 }

Default 30 days, minimum 1 (0 is rejected with a validation error). At startup, it deletes the older transcripts. It applies on the next session, not live.

2. Turn it off entirely

export CLAUDE_CODE_SKIP_PROMPT_HISTORY=1   # stop writing transcripts

In headless or the SDK, --no-session-persistence (or persistSession: false). Mind the tradeoff: with no transcripts you lose --resume and Rewind, because both read from there.

3. Delete what's already there

It's a normal folder. Remove the sessions you don't want to keep (carefully):

rm ~/.claude/projects/<project>/<session-id>.jsonl

Reference

Control	What it does
`cleanupPeriodDays` (in `settings.json`)	Retention in days. Default 30, minimum 1
`CLAUDE_CODE_SKIP_PROMPT_HISTORY=1`	Stops writing transcripts (interactive session)
`--no-session-persistence` / `persistSession: false`	Same thing, in headless or the SDK

Heads up:

It's a tradeoff, not a free switch: turning writing off kills --resume and Rewind.
The cleanupPeriodDays deletion runs at startup, so a freshly written transcript stays on disk until a later session crosses the cutoff.

This is the hidden side of Rewind with checkpoints: that feature is convenient because your history lives on disk; this tip is where it lives and how to control its lifetime.

Official docs: Settings (cleanupPeriodDays)

Requirements

A settings.json in ~/.claude/ (user) or .claude/ (project). The change applies when the next session starts.