Persist your login and memory across rebuilds

Using python-copier-template? This is already set up for you — its devcontainer mounts the terminal-config directory and creates it on the host first. There’s nothing to do; skip this page.

By default a container rebuild wipes ~/.claude and ~/.claude.json, so you lose your Claude login (OAuth token), chat history, and any skills or settings you’ve added — and have to log in again.

The fix is a host directory bind-mounted into the container, in two parts.

1. Create the host directory before the container starts

Add an initializeCommand so the host-side directory exists before the mount is wired. This runs on the host, as you, before the container is created:

"initializeCommand": "mkdir -p \"$HOME/.config/terminal-config\""

Without this, Docker/Podman creates the missing bind source itself as a root-owned directory, which then fights your host UID — so create it as yourself first.

2. Mount it into the container

Point that host directory at /user-terminal-config:

"mounts": [
  "source=${localEnv:HOME}/.config/terminal-config,target=/user-terminal-config,type=bind"
]

Rebuild the container and re-run ./install (or let postCreate run it). The installer symlinks ~/.claude and ~/.claude.json into the mounted directory, so your login and memory now live on the host: they survive rebuilds, and they’re shared with every other devcontainer that mounts the same directory.

If you mount at a path other than /user-terminal-config, set CLAUDE_SHARED_CONFIG to that target before ./install runs so the installer finds it.