Factory Desktop persists and lists unused zero-token sessions across project folders

[demosunguohua]

Summary

Factory Desktop persists unused sessions that contain no user prompt, assistant response, or token usage. These sessions remain visible in the session history as "New Session" or "Untitled" and accumulate across project folders.

A configured SessionStart hook makes the issue more visible because Factory writes a hidden user_only hook event into the transcript, but the logs show that Factory Desktop calls InitializeSession before the hook is executed. The hook therefore appears to amplify the persistence/visibility problem rather than create the session.

Environment

• Factory Desktop / Droid version: 0.183.0 (also observed on 0.182.0)
• Platform: macOS arm64
• OS: Darwin 25.5.0
• Session storage: ~/.factory/sessions/
• Global SessionStart hook configured

Steps to reproduce

1. Configure a global SessionStart command hook.
2. Use Factory Desktop across one or more project folders.
3. Open or initialize sessions, including navigating away from a newly initialized draft without submitting a prompt.
4. Inspect ~/.factory/sessions/<encoded-cwd>/ or the Factory Desktop session history.

The issue has also occurred while submitting a message to an existing session: at the same timestamp, Factory Desktop initialized a separate unused session.

Actual behavior

Factory creates and retains a transcript similar to:

{"type":"session_start","title":"New Session","cwd":"/path/to/project"}
{"type":"message","message":{"role":"user","content":[],"visibility":"user_only","hookEventName":"SessionStart","hookStatus":"completed"}}

Its settings contain zero usage:

{
  "assistantActiveTimeMs": 0,
  "tokenUsage": {
    "inputTokens": 0,
    "outputTokens": 0,
    "cacheCreationTokens": 0,
    "cacheReadTokens": 0,
    "thinkingTokens": 0,
    "factoryCredits": 0
  }
}

A local scan found 40 such sessions across multiple encoded working-directory folders. Some older unused sessions contain only the session_start record, which indicates that hooks are not required for the underlying empty-session creation.

Expected behavior

An initialized draft should not be persisted in session history until it receives a real user message, or unused zero-token drafts should be hidden and garbage-collected automatically.

user_only lifecycle-hook events should not cause an otherwise unused draft to be treated as a meaningful session or refresh its apparent activity timestamp.

Relevant evidence

The observed sequence in the Droid log is:

Droid InitializeSession method called
[droid process] Spawning: droid exec --input-format stream-jsonrpc --output-format stream-jsonrpc
[JsonRpc] Handling initialize_session
[Session] Saving session settings (inputTokens=0, outputTokens=0)
[Hooks] Matched commands (eventName=SessionStart)
[Hooks] Hook execution completed
[SessionController] Session created

The process ancestry confirms that these Desktop-originated sessions are initialized by Factory:

factory-desktop
  -> droid daemon --enable-child-ipc --listen ipc
     -> droid exec --input-format stream-jsonrpc --output-format stream-jsonrpc

Workaround

The current workaround is to periodically delete sessions whose token usage is zero and whose transcript contains only session_start plus empty user_only SessionStart hook events.

[westfable]

I’m experiencing behavior that appears related to this issue, with an additional cross-device synchronization problem.

Summary

Sessions created in Factory Desktop are generally not usable when I access the same account from Factory’s web app on another computer or phone. The session list shows many blank New Session or Untitled entries instead of the actual session history. It appears that only sessions created on the current device load correctly.

The issue affects all projects I have tested and has been occurring throughout the past week. I have also experienced similar behavior since I first started using Factory, including on older versions.

Actual behavior

• Sessions created on one device appear blank or unavailable on another device.
• The web app displays many New Session or Untitled entries.
• Only approximately one session per project appears to load correctly.
• The issue occurs across all projects I have tested.
• The screenshot attached shows the web app displaying the accumulated blank sessions.

Expected behavior

Sessions should be synchronized to the same Factory account so that a session created on Desktop can be opened with its complete transcript from the web app, and vice versa.

Environment

• Web browser: Vivaldi, current version, Chromium-based
• Reported web user agent: Windows 10, Chromium 150
• Desktop OS: Windows
• Factory Desktop: updated recently; exact version available if needed
• Frequency: persistent, occurring throughout the past week and intermittently since I began using Factory

Reproduction

1. Sign in to the same Factory account on Factory Desktop and the web app.
2. Open or create a session on one device.
3. Send messages and allow the session to contain conversation history.
4. Open the same project and session list from another device.
5. Observe that the original session is missing, blank, or represented by a New Session/Untitled entry.

Could the maintainers confirm whether cross-device session synchronization is covered by this issue, or whether it should be tracked separately?