Welcome Back Feature

The Welcome Back feature helps you seamlessly resume your work by automatically detecting when you return to a project with existing conversation history and offering to continue from where you left off.

Overview

When you start Qwen Code in a project directory that contains a previously generated project summary (.qwen/PROJECT_SUMMARY.md), the Welcome Back dialog will automatically appear, giving you the option to either start fresh or continue your previous conversation.

How It Works

Automatic Detection

The Welcome Back feature automatically detects:

• Project Summary File: Looks for .qwen/PROJECT_SUMMARY.md in your current project directory
• Conversation History: Checks if there’s meaningful conversation history to resume
• Settings: Respects your enableWelcomeBack setting (enabled by default)

Welcome Back Dialog

When a project summary is found, you’ll see a dialog with:

• Last Updated Time: Shows when the summary was last generated
• Overall Goal: Displays the main objective from your previous session
• Current Plan: Shows task progress with status indicators:
  • [DONE] - Completed tasks
  • [IN PROGRESS] - Currently working on
  • [TODO] - Planned tasks
• Task Statistics: Summary of total tasks, completed, in progress, and pending

Options

You have two choices when the Welcome Back dialog appears:

1. Start new chat session

   • Closes the dialog and begins a fresh conversation
   • No previous context is loaded

2. Continue previous conversation

   • Automatically fills the input with: @.qwen/PROJECT_SUMMARY.md, Based on our previous conversation, Let's continue?
   • Loads the project summary as context for the AI
   • Allows you to seamlessly pick up where you left off

Configuration

Enable/Disable Welcome Back

You can control the Welcome Back feature through settings:

Via Settings Dialog:

1. Run /settings in Qwen Code
2. Find “Enable Welcome Back” in the UI category
3. Toggle the setting on/off

Via Settings File: Add to your .qwen/settings.json:

{
  "enableWelcomeBack": true
}

Settings Locations:

• User settings: ~/.qwen/settings.json (affects all projects)
• Project settings: .qwen/settings.json (project-specific)

Keyboard Shortcuts

• Escape: Close the Welcome Back dialog (defaults to “Start new chat session”)

Integration with Other Features

Project Summary Generation

The Welcome Back feature works seamlessly with the /chat summary command:

1. Generate Summary: Use /chat summary to create a project summary
2. Automatic Detection: Next time you start Qwen Code in this project, Welcome Back will detect the summary
3. Resume Work: Choose to continue and the summary will be loaded as context

Quit Confirmation

When exiting with /quit-confirm and choosing “Generate summary and quit”:

1. A project summary is automatically created
2. Next session will trigger the Welcome Back dialog
3. You can seamlessly continue your work

File Structure

The Welcome Back feature creates and uses:

your-project/
├── .qwen/
│   └── PROJECT_SUMMARY.md    # Generated project summary

PROJECT_SUMMARY.md Format

The generated summary follows this structure:

# Project Summary
 
## Overall Goal
 
<!-- Single, concise sentence describing the high-level objective -->
 
## Key Knowledge
 
<!-- Crucial facts, conventions, and constraints -->
<!-- Includes: technology choices, architecture decisions, user preferences -->
 
## Recent Actions
 
<!-- Summary of significant recent work and outcomes -->
<!-- Includes: accomplishments, discoveries, recent changes -->
 
## Current Plan
 
<!-- The current development roadmap and next steps -->
<!-- Uses status markers: [DONE], [IN PROGRESS], [TODO] -->
 
---
 
## Summary Metadata
 
**Update time**: 2025-01-10T15:30:00.000Z