Using the terminal · 12

Sessions

Every session is saved as it runs, one file per session at ~/.riffer/sessions/<directory>/<session id>.jsonl, one JSON object per line, so cat and jq work on it and a crash loses at most the last line.

Resuming

To…	Run
continue the most recent session in this directory	`riffer -c`
resume a session by id	`riffer -r <id>`
pick from this directory’s sessions	`riffer -r`, or `/resume` in a session
pick from every directory’s sessions	`/resume --all`

A session resumes in the directory it was saved in, wherever you resume it from, so its tools, project settings, skills and rig.rb are that directory’s. If that directory no longer exists, the session isn’t resumed. When there is no session to continue, the terminal starts a fresh one; headless exits 2 instead.

A resumed session keeps its id and carries on in the same file. What comes back:

Restored from the session	Taken from today
the conversation	settings, credentials and extensions
a `/model` switch, if its provider still has credentials	the tools, and the system prompt
a `/reasoning` switch
the skills the model activated, if they still exist

Whether a flag or a restored switch wins is in Configuration. If a crash cut off a turn mid-tool-call, the unfinished calls are marked as interrupted rather than run again.

The picker

/resume lists sessions newest first, each with its first prompt and when it was last used.

Input	Does
text, then Enter	filters to sessions whose title contains it; with one left, Enter resumes it
a row number, then Enter	resumes that session
Ctrl-D, a row number, `y`	deletes that session
Ctrl-C	closes the picker

Switching keeps the session you left saved, as does /new, which starts a fresh session in place.

Tracing the last turn

/trace shows the last turn step by step from the saved session — including in a session you just resumed:

02:00:01.000  prompt    Fix the failing test
02:00:02.250  preamble  I'll read both files.
02:00:02.250  dispatch  read {"path":"a.rb"}
02:00:02.250  dispatch  read {"path":"b.rb"}
              silent    6.8s
02:00:09.050  finish    read
02:00:09.051  finish    read (execution_error)
02:00:10.500  answer    Fixed.

Step	Shows
`prompt`	the first line of your message
`preamble`	the first line of text the model sent along with tool calls
`dispatch`	a tool call: the tool and its arguments
`finish`	a tool result, with the error type when it failed
`answer`	the first line of a reply that called no tool
`notice`	a background job exit that continued the turn
`silent`	a gap of 5 seconds or more, and its length

Times are UTC. The results of one batch of tool calls are saved together, so their finish lines share a time; --json has each call’s own timing.

Opting out

Setting	Saves this session	Can resume saved sessions
`--no-save`	no	no
`"sessions": {"save": false}` in settings	no	yes, without adding to them

/trace needs a saved session, so it is not available when saving is off.

To keep sessions somewhere else — your app’s database, say — see Session stores.