Save and restore tabs in gnome terminal

This seems to work on my machine:

gnome-terminal --geometry=260x25-0+0 --tab -e "bash -c 'date; read -n1'" --tab -e "bash -c 'echo meow; read -n1' " --tab --tab

Please note, as soon as the processes executed by -e are done running, they will terminate. In this case, bash is loaded, runs whatever commands you pass to it, and immediately exists. I put in the read statements to wait for user input. This way those tabs won't close until you press a key, just so you can see it in this example. Without them, it would look as if only two tabs opened, because the other two would execute and close too quickly.

A very simple workaround for you would be including a function in your ~/.zshrc that remembers the working directory and changes into it when opening zsh:

cd $(<>/dev/shm/$USER-pwd)

__cd(){
    \cd "$@"
    pwd >/dev/shm/$USER-pwd
}
alias cd=__cd

We use /dev/shm instead of /tmp to avoid disk writes, although /tmp could already be a tmpfs on your system. \cd is used to avoid a fork bomb.

If you would like this feature for gnome-terminal only, you could include an if statement to check your current terminal or active window. Also, if you are concerned that other users might find out what was your last directory, you could modify the permissions for $USER-pwd with chmod:

if xprop -id $(xprop -root 32x ' $0' _NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW | awk '{print $NF}') WM_CLASS | grep -q gnome-terminal; then
    cd    $(<>/dev/shm/$USER-pwd)
    chmod 600 /dev/shm/$USER-pwd

    __cd(){
        \cd "$@"
        pwd >/dev/shm/$USER-pwd
    }
    alias cd=__cd
fi