Sessions & Terminals
A session is a live Claude Code conversation running inside one of your projects. The desktop app is built to run many of them at once — across projects — and keep each one visible and recoverable. Sessions appear in the Session Rail on the left and in the Conductor on the right; they run in the Focus Pane in the center.
Session types
Section titled “Session types”| Type | What it is |
|---|---|
| Terminal session | A standard Claude Code session bound to the project folder, with live streaming output. The default. |
| Planning session | A session opened in Plan mode (or “Send to Shaper”) to shape a feature into a spec. Marked with a PLAN badge in the rail. |
Every session carries its own status, title, task progress, and git branch, all surfaced on its rail card.
Session status
Section titled “Session status”Sessions report one of a few states, shown as a colored dot in the rail and as counts in the Shell Footer:
| State | Dot | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Running | Blue (pulsing) | Claude is actively working. |
| Needs input | Amber (pulsing) | Claude asked a question and is waiting on you. |
| Done | Green (no dot) | The run finished with output and no pending question. |
| Stopped / not started | Red / gray | The session is idle or hasn’t run yet. |
Choosing a layout
Section titled “Choosing a layout”The Dev tab in the Focus Pane has a layout dropdown that controls what fills the center column:
- Terminals — Your sessions. In grid view every session is a cell you can click to select, double-click to expand, or close (with a brief confirm). In full-screen view one session fills the pane and you move between sessions with the carousel.
- Preview — A full-screen live preview of your running app (a local dev server).
- Terminals + Preview — A split view with a draggable divider, so you can watch your app update next to the session building it. Toggle the preview dock anytime with
⌘⇧P/Ctrl+Shift+P.
Working in a session
Section titled “Working in a session”- Rename a session by clicking its title in the rail card or the terminal topbar.
- Attach images by pasting or dragging them into the input — useful for screenshots and design references.
- Snippets and the code viewer are available from the terminal topbar when the project supports them.
- Cost & tokens for a session are shown inline when available.
Starting sessions
Section titled “Starting sessions”You rarely create a bare terminal — most work starts as a request:
- From the Conductor — Type what you want in Ask. The Conductor classifies it and launches a session for the task or spec. (See The Conductor.)
- From the Specs/Tasks list — Click Start on a ready spec or task.
- From the rail — Hover a project and click the + to open a blank session in it.
Mission Control (cold start)
Section titled “Mission Control (cold start)”When a project has no sessions yet, the Focus Pane shows Mission Control — a landing page with today’s briefs, your next few calendar events, and a card per project listing its intake specs with one-click Start spec / Start session actions. It’s the on-ramp into the orchestrator shell.
Related
Section titled “Related”- The Conductor — what launches and tracks your sessions.
- Desktop App Overview — the three-column shell.
- Keyboard Shortcuts — session and layout shortcuts.