Daemon & Sessions

Overview

ori-term keeps shell sessions in a small background process, and the window connects to it over a local socket. The eventual goal is a model where shells survive after you close the window and resume seamlessly when you open it again — without needing a separate multiplexer like tmux running on top.

Process Model

The process_model config field selects how the terminal runs:

process_model = "daemon"    # default — connect to (or auto-start) the background process
process_model = "embedded"  # single process, no IPC — useful in sandboxes

Daemon mode falls back to embedded automatically when the background process cannot be reached.

What Works Today

• Background process for shell sessions — installs alongside the terminal as a separate executable
• Local connection — Unix domain sockets on Linux/macOS, named pipes on Windows
• Auto-start with retry — first launch spawns the background process automatically (3-attempt retry)
• Shell session lifecycle — create, resize, write, read snapshots
• Embedded fallback — single-process mode when the background process is unreachable

Planned

• Multi-window — multiple windows connecting to the same set of running sessions, with the connection protocol hardened for stability across long-running setups
• Auto-save — periodic saves of window positions, tabs, pane layout, and working directories
• Crash recovery — detect unexpected exits and offer to restore the session
• Scrollback archive — disk-backed scrollback that survives restarts
• Remote shells — SSH and WSL panes spawned through the same background process