Claude and Codex chats

Claude and Codex show every project in a single window. In Work context, they get a project instead of a Link field: switching to the workspace brings back that project’s latest chat. This works with the Code tab of the Claude app, and with Codex.

Choose a project

Click the app’s row in Work context. It reads Choose a project until you pick one. Then choose a folder, drag it from the Finder, type its path, or click one of the app’s projects in the list below, most recent first. Claude lists the folders its chats ran in; Codex lists the projects of its sidebar, under the names they have there.

To find a project, type in Search Claude projects or Search Codex projects: the list keeps the projects whose name or folder contains every word you type. ↑ ↓ move through them, Return picks one, and Return again saves. Esc clears the search, then closes the dialog.

Under Opens when you switch here, the dialog shows the chat a switch will open: its title, when it was last used, and how many other chats the project has. The row in Work context shows that title too, or No chat yet.

Projects are saved and duplicated with the workspace.

Which chat opens

Layout opens the project’s latest chat:

Claude: the chat you last had on screen, rather than the last one an agent worked in. For older sessions, it’s the one with the latest activity.
Codex: the first chat in Codex’s own list.

A chat belongs to the project when it runs in the project folder or one of its subfolders, worktrees included (.claude/worktrees/…). A neighbouring folder with a similar name, such as layout-2, doesn’t count.

Only the chats of the Claude account you used last count. Archived chats are ignored, and so are Codex automations and sub-agents.

A project without a chat opens nothing, and the app keeps what it shows. The dialog then suggests starting a chat in the app from that folder: switching to the workspace brings it back from then on.

When the chat opens

Launch layout opens the chat once the windows are placed.
Switching back to the workspace reopens it only if another workspace showed the app in between. Launching the app never does, and during quick switches only the last one counts. This is the same rule as app links.
The app comes to the front when it opens the chat. For two seconds, Layout gives the focus back to the workspace’s window.

What Layout reads

Layout only reads these files and never changes them:

Claude’s session files, in ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude-code-sessions. A file is read again only after it changes.
Codex’s state database, ~/.codex/state_*.sqlite, for its chats and its projects, opened read-only.

Neither app documents these formats. Anything Layout doesn’t recognize counts as no chat. If the Codex database can’t be read, the dialog says so, and so does the diagnostics export, without chat titles.

The chat opens through the app’s own link, sent only to that app and only with a well-formed identifier.