Evidence record / gemini-cli

A dated record of one change, kept so the writing that cites it can be checked. Compiled from the sources listed below by the research run, not written for reading. The judgment lives in the signals and issues that cite it, below.

Gemini CLI: Session Resume Reliability Fix

What Changed

PR #26577 fixes session resume behavior for legacy session JSON files:

Valid legacy chat JSON files (with sessionId and messages) that were previously missing from /resume and --list-sessions now appear.
--resume <sessionId> failures no longer silently start a new session; the error surfaces correctly.

Operator Consequence

Operators who relied on --resume with legacy session formats may have been unknowingly starting fresh sessions instead of resuming. This fix makes resume failure explicit and makes legacy sessions discoverable.

Context

This directly affects the session export/import capability noted in the prior finding (2026-05-11-gemini-subagent-protocol-and-session-portability). The export/import feature is more reliable after this fix.

Finding metadata

Confidence: high
Actionability: test
Accessibility impact: low
Operator relevance: medium

Run: 2026-05-12-partial-cycle-gemini-refresh-2026-05-12-frontier-v0

Finding ID: 2026-05-12-gemini-session-resume-reliability

Accepted signals

Session resume now surfaces errors and finds legacy sessions / 2026-05-12

Profile citations

Gemini CLI / claim / session-resume-reliability
Gemini CLI / posture / capability
Gemini CLI / posture / governance

Source links

Primary links, including exact changelog lines when available.

Gemini CLI
commit diff reviewedPR #26577 — fix(cli): restore resume for legacy sessionsgithub.com/google-gemini/gemini-cli/pull/26577

Versioned source: run artifact