Sessions
A session is one conversation with its history: messages, tool calls, their output, and the usage they recorded.
Several features work on whole sessions:
e rpcopens a session. See automation./resumelists sessions.- A channel maps a session to a thread.
On this page
Where they live
e saves each conversation as a JSONL file under ~/.e/sessions/, one file per
session. e appends to the file as the turn runs.
| Command | Effect |
|---|---|
e | start a new session |
e -c | continue this directory's most recent session |
e -r | pick a session from the list |
In the terminal, /resume does the same as -r with a picker. /tree shows
the current session's shape.
Branch in place
Branching lets you go back to an earlier message and try a different path. Every message has an id and a parent, so a session is a tree, not a line.
/tree moves back to an earlier message and continues from there. The branch
you left stays in the file, and you can reach it the same way. Nothing is
rewritten.
Branching changes the conversation, not the working directory. It does not undo edits a tool already made. Use git for the files.
Fork a session
/fork copies the current branch into a session file of its own. Use it when
the next task deserves a separate history rather than a second branch of this
one.
e rpc exposes both, as session.fork and the parent of a resumed session.
Context
When the model's context window fills, e summarizes older messages to make room and continues the same turn. You do not restart the task.
Run /compact to ask for that summary by hand. Add a focus to steer what the
summary keeps, such as decisions, unfinished work, or a subsystem:
/compact <focus>
Compaction preserves the instructions and the previous summaries, so a long session keeps its rules.
/usage reports recorded tokens and estimated cost by model for the session.
The report includes compaction's own requests.
Export
/export writes the active branch as one self-contained HTML page. The page
holds the conversation, the tool activity, and the code it touched.
Read the page before you send it. It is exactly what the model saw.
Recall
Press up on an empty composer to walk back through your prompts from this and
earlier sessions. e keeps them in ~/.e/history.jsonl. This is usually faster
than remembering which session you meant.
/undo restores up to 100 session writes or edits.
Commands
| Command | Effect |
|---|---|
/resume | reopen a saved session |
/tree | return to an earlier message and branch in place |
/fork | continue in a separate session file |
/compact [focus] | summarize older context, optionally around a focus |
/export | save the active branch as one HTML page |
/undo | restore session writes or edits |
/usage | tokens and estimated cost per model |
/name <label> | name the session, shown in /resume |