Ability to revert to previous chat message in claude code

[wiltaylor-daf]

Problem:

In claude code you can press ESC twice and revert a chat session to a previous message.

I can see there is a button to revert to a previous chat message in zed but not available on Claude Code agent yet.

Proposed solution

It would be nice to impliment the ability to revert to previous chat message and rewind the context window to that point. I use this feature a lot in the tui version of cluade code. It is a great way to managing the context window as you can fork from a previous chat message to work on other a pre-primed chat session without your context window filling up and being compacted.

• Easy solution would be to impliment the ability to modify chat messages using the existing chat and resuming the conversation from that point.

• Awesome solution would be add the ability to set bookmarks in a chat message so you can get back to that point easily. Then have the ability to fork the conversation so it creates a new session with the existing chat history up to that point and lets you select between them in the ui (claude code actually does this if you look at the session history).

[benbrandt]

Hi @wiltaylor-daf thanks for using this and providing the feedback!
We are currently waiting on Claude Code SDK support for this exact feature, and then we should be able to add this to the ACP version. Will keep this around to track it.

[Gnol86]

Hi @benbrandt

It seems to me that this is now the case with Claude Code's 2.0 update. Are you going to implement this super handy feature?

[svintit]

Bump

[joaqo]

Bumpity bump bump.

[williameckert1]

Is there any update on this? Or are you still waiting for Claude Code SDK support?

[RBilly]

From agent-sdk doc, it seems that it already provides the capability.
https://code.claude.com/docs/en/agent-sdk/file-checkpointing

[Kanishk2207]

The SDK blocker this was parked on is gone, so I have opened #966 implementing the core of this request.

@benbrandt's reply here in 2025-09 was that the adapter was "waiting on Claude Code SDK support for this exact feature". As @RBilly noted above, the Agent SDK now exposes what is needed: enableFileCheckpointing with Query.rewindFiles for the filesystem, and resumeSessionAt for the conversation. This repo had even pre-staged the plumbing, in the Session.messageIdToUuid field whose comment reads "NOT READ YET — recorded now so the mapping exists if/when we wire up fork/rewind". #966 reads it.

What #966 covers

Two extension methods, named alongside the existing _session/steering:

_session/rewind_points {sessionId}
  -> {points: [{messageId, resumeAtMessageId, text, index}]}

_session/rewind {sessionId, messageId, mode?, dryRun?}
  -> {files?: RewindFilesResult, conversation?: {rewound, messagesDropped, error?}}

mode is files, conversation, or both, which is the choice the CLI's /rewind presents. dryRun previews the file diffstat and the number of messages that would be dropped without applying either.

Against the two solutions described in this issue:

• "Revert to a previous chat message and rewind the context window to that point" — this is mode: "conversation". The dropped turns leave the model's context and the transcript; it is a truncation, not a branch.
• "The ability to modify chat messages using the existing chat and resuming the conversation from that point" — this needs no extra method. It composes: _session/rewind with mode: "conversation", then an ordinary session/prompt carrying the edited text. Verified end to end, with the prefix surviving, the replaced prompt gone from both context and transcript, and the replacement occupying its position.

It also does the half the CLI does that this issue does not ask for: restoring the files, either on its own or together with the conversation, since rewinding one without the other leaves the tree and the agent's memory disagreeing.

What it does not cover

• Forking from an earlier message into a second selectable session — the "awesome solution" here. That is feat: support rewinding to a message when forking a session #872, already open, which adds _meta.claudeCode.rewindTo to session/fork. It is genuinely a different operation: it mints a new session and leaves the original intact, where feat: expose file and conversation rewind over ACP #966 mutates the original in place. The two compose rather than compete, so I have not duplicated it.
• Bookmarks on a message — _session/rewind_points already returns the enumerated targets with ids, text and index, which is the list a bookmark UI needs. Naming and persisting them looks like client state to me; the SDK's tagSession/renameSession operate on sessions rather than messages.

One caveat worth knowing

A conversation rewind is immediate for the agent but only reaches the transcript on disk when the next turn is written. In that window, a client that re-renders by tearing the session down and resuming it reloads the untruncated transcript and silently undoes the rewind. #966 documents this in docs/rewind-extension.md; clients should leave their rendered history in place and say those turns are no longer in context, rather than reloading.

Feedback very welcome, particularly on the method names and on whether the file and conversation halves belong behind one method with a mode or two separate ones.