recover-deleted-claude-conversationlisted

# Recover a deleted Claude conversation The Claude Desktop app (and claude.ai in a browser) is a Chromium shell that aggressively caches every response it receives, including full conversation bodies and generated artifacts. A conversation deleted in the UI still exists as compressed HTTP bodies in that Chromium blockfile cache — until the cache evicts it. This is a **race**: every step below exists to win it, so freeze the source before doing anything else, including reading the rest of this file twice. ## 1. Freeze the source Fully quit the Claude Desktop app — File -> Exit / Menu -> Quit, not the window's close button — then confirm no Claude process remains (`ps aux | grep -i claude` on macOS/Linux, Task Manager on Windows). Check twice. A running process can still write to the cache and evict the very entry you're trying to save. Done when: the process list shows zero Claude matches, on two consecutive checks. ## 2. Snapshot the cache before touching anything else Locate the OS-specific cache directory: | OS | Path | |---|---| | Windows | `%APPDATA%\Claude\Cache\Cache_Data\` | | macOS | `~/Library/Application Support/Claude/Cache/Cache_Data/` | | Linux | `~/.config/Claude/Cache/Cache_Data/` | Copy `index`, `data_0` through `data_3`, and the `f_*` files (filter by today's date to cut noise) to a separate backup directory. Never run extraction against the live cache directory — every later step operates on the **snapshot**, never the original. If the conversation