I moved 432 Cowork tasks to a new Claude account. Claude Code deleted 13 of my transcripts on the way.

This week I retired one Claude account and moved to another on the same Mac. The old account had 432 Cowork tasks, 10 Projects, 39 scheduled tasks, 26 memory files and 28 Claude Code sessions. The account data export covers chats. I couldn't find a way to export what Cowork keeps on the machine: Projects, project memory and scheduled tasks.

So I went looking on disk. Everything was there. Three things still went wrong, and one of them cost me data. The scripts I wrote along the way are now a small open-source tool, carryover.

Where things live

None of this is documented. It's what the macOS desktop app wrote through October 2026.

Claude Code history isn't tied to the login. On the same machine, the new account can claude --resume an old session and carry on. Cowork is per account: the new account starts with an empty sidebar, no Projects and no scheduled tasks.

Problem 1: Claude Code deletes old transcripts

Halfway through the move, Claude Code started once and 13 of my transcripts disappeared. All of them were from September 19 to 21.

It's a setting. The data usage docs say Claude Code keeps transcripts in ~/.claude/projects/ for 30 days by default, and cleanupPeriodDays changes that. I had never set it. (Sessions started from the desktop app or Cowork are exempt by default.)

My last Time Machine backup was from May. The only copy left is a local snapshot macOS took on October 9. If you use Claude Code from the terminal, add this to ~/.claude/settings.json today, whether or not you plan to switch accounts:

{ "cleanupPeriodDays": 3650 }

Problem 2: rebuilt tasks can't read their own prompts

The 39 scheduled tasks keep their prompts as files under ~/Documents/Claude/Scheduled/. I recreated the tasks in the new account and pointed them at those files, then found the tasks couldn't open them. Cowork treats ~/Documents/Claude as its own folder and keeps sessions out of it.

The fix was dull: copy all 62 prompt folders (39 registered, 23 that no task pointed at any more) to a normal folder and point the tasks there. Also, 12 of the 39 had been moved to the cloud by the app in September and October. Those cloud copies stay with the old account and need rebuilding like the rest.

Problem 3: transcripts are full of secrets

My first idea was to copy the whole Cowork folder somewhere safe. Then I opened a metadata file. Each one also holds the full system prompt, connector configs with server URLs, and the tools I had approved. You don't want that in a backup you might share.

The transcripts were worse. When I ran the finished tool on my own data, it masked 78 strings. 52 of them were API keys and bearer tokens, most inside curl and docker run -e commands from debugging sessions months ago. They had been sitting in plain-text JSON the whole time. If you have used Cowork or Claude Code for a while, assume the same about yours, and rotate whatever you find.

The tool

carryover does two things.

carryover scan lists what is on disk and warns about the three problems above: how many transcripts the 30-day cleanup will take this week, which prompts live under ~/Documents/Claude, which folders no longer exist, and which tasks were already moved to the cloud. It writes nothing.

carryover export ~/somewhere builds a folder you can open in any editor:

• condensed transcripts (your prompts and Claude's replies, no tool noise) for every Claude Code session and Cowork task
• memory, global and per project
• Cowork output files, copied as-is
• one RESTORE.md per Project: name, folders, instructions, and a first message for the new Project that tells Claude to read the old memory, check it against the current state of the folders, and keep only what still holds
• TASKS.md with every scheduled task's schedule, folders, last run and prompt
• INDEX.md and a manifest.json that records every file written and every file skipped

On my machine, without output files, the export took 9 seconds and wrote 1,198 files. Recreating a Project from its restore pack is four pastes.

A few rules I held it to. It only opens source files for reading, and it refuses an output folder inside any source folder. It reads 12 named fields from session metadata and ignores the rest. It never copies files that look like credentials (.env, *.pem, id_rsa, cookie stores) and never opens ~/.claude.json. It masks common key formats in everything it writes. Masking is a safety net, not a guarantee, so read the archive before you share it.

It's Python 3.9+, standard library only, MIT licensed:

pipx install git+https://github.com/lizhuojunx86/carryover
carryover scan

What it can't carry

Logins and connector sign-ins, plugins, and anything that only lived in the cloud: claude.ai Project documents, chat history, cloud scheduled tasks and their run logs. For those, request the old account's data export while you can still sign in. Export the old account's memory as well. Mine held newer Project notes than the local files: 12 of the 63 files that existed in both places had changed since the last local copy.

If you're about to switch

Set cleanupPeriodDays first. Run carryover scan and read the warnings before you sign out of anything. Then export, rebuild Projects from the restore packs, and recreate scheduled tasks with their prompts in a folder Cowork can read.

I've only tested this on macOS and Linux with a personal account. If your layout looks different (Windows, Team or Enterprise), open an issue with your carryover scan --json output, private bits removed, and I'll add support. Happy to answer questions in the comments.