Session

A Session represents a development round — a feature implementation, a bug fix, a code review, or a long-term task. Sessions are recoverable, allowing you to continue from where you left off.

Sessions provide:

  • Persisted context across Turns
  • Historical tracking for review and auditing
  • Memory mounting for cross-round learning
  • Trace records for every operation

Session Lifecycle

Created → Active → Paused → Resumed → Completed

Create a Session

/session new

Start a new development round. This creates a new Session with a clean context window while retaining access to project memory.

List Sessions

/session list

View all Sessions in the current workspace.

Resume a Session

/session load <id-prefix>

Load a previous Session by ID (supports partial matching).

View Current Session

/session current

Display the Session ID, model, and message count.

Clear Session Messages

/session clear

Clear the current Session’s messages without deleting Session metadata.

Turn

A Turn is a single interaction within a Session — one user input followed by the Agent’s response. A Turn is the atomic unit of execution in Alius.

In Bypass mode, each Turn is independent. In Plan mode, Turns build on each other to complete the plan.

Run

A Run is an execution instance within a Session. Each Run has a RunRef, status, associated events, and Trace identity.

Trace

Every operation within a Turn is traced. Trace records:

  • What the Agent decided to do
  • Which tools were called
  • What was produced
  • Whether each step succeeded or failed

This gives you full observability and debuggability. Traces connect requests, commands, events, logs, and runtime observations into a complete execution chain.

Session Persistence

Sessions are automatically saved to your workspace. They persist after the workspace exits, and you can resume them at any time via /session load.

Session Workflow

A typical Session workflow:

  1. /session new — Start a new feature or task
  2. Describe your goal in Plan mode
  3. Review and approve tool calls through Shell Gate
  4. /review — Check Agent output
  5. /memory save — Save important findings
  6. /session clear or /session new — Move to the next task