Session state glossary

Session ownership and execution answer separate questions. Read these facts together to understand a session; an active claim alone does not prove progress.

Independent session facts

Term	Meaning
Session status	Working for an in-flight tool or a recent unfinished turn; Waiting for other non-ended sessions; Ended for end stamps. All card surfaces and the session CLI share it.
Active time	Latest tool call, heartbeat, prompt/stop marker or recorded finished turn. The project recent window defaults to 20 minutes.
Presence	present unless end stamps or unsuperseded native process death prove ended or gone. A later tool call proves presence again; heartbeat alone does not.
Activity	working, between_turns, or silent, based on tool activity and turn posture. This diagnostic tool-progress classification is separate from the display status.
Intent	An explicit pause: parked or awaiting, with a reason; otherwise none. Between turns does not mean parked.
Custody	Active holdings and whether automatic reclaim is eligible, with the policy reason. Work claims protect their holders regardless of activity age.
Next actor	Who can act next, with a reason and state time. Actors are this_session, operator, parent_or_steering, another_item, ci_or_deploy, and nobody.
Reclaimable session	A session eligible for automatic cleanup. The legacy command selector calls this stale; silence and process absence alone do not release a claim.

See the session model for wire fields and the sessions guide for coordination and recovery.

The wire field session_state contains status, active_at, reason, presence, activity, intent, custody, and next_actor. Intent includes state, reason and awaiting_who; custody includes holds, holds_work_claim, reclaimable and reason; next actor includes actor, reason and since. A pending decision names its active human audience; an unsatisfied dependency names another item; a running CI or release names CI or deployment. Otherwise a live session can continue, and unclaimed ready work needs parent or steering direction. A parked session keeps its quiet reason and needs direction unless a durable wait names another actor. Ended sessions and terminal items have nobody left to act.

project-policy.session_idle_minutes defaults to 20 and measures tool silence. Boot preserves the configured value when renaming the earlier steering setting. A current running open call excuses silence for at most 45 minutes, the shared watcher ceiling. An unfinished call alone never proves a running process. Consumers tolerate an absent session_state when connected to an older server.