Durability and recovery

The window is disposable. The session is not. Recovery stays honest about what can return.

Quit without ending the work

Local sessions run in a private tmux server outside the Tortie window. Quitting the app, closing its window, or installing an update does not end those processes.

The first time you quit with active sessions, Tortie briefly confirms that the work will continue. Later quits are immediate.

tmux is the private session server

Tortie ships a pinned copy of tmux and starts a separate server on the gmux socket. Each named tmux session owns the pseudo-terminal, agent process, and server-side scrollback. The Tortie window attaches as a client and can disappear without taking that work with it.

Part	Responsibility
Private tmux server	Keeps the live processes, terminal state, names, and scrollback while Tortie is closed.
Tortie window	Shows the sessions and sends your input. Reopening it reconnects to the same live work.
Tortie session record	Keeps project ownership, agent identity, restore information, and saved snapshots.

Private means separate from the tmux server you may already use. Tortie does not read your default tmux ls server or your ~/.tmux.conf. It only adopts sessions carrying Tortie's own identity marker.

Optional: inspect the server if tmux is already on your PATH

tmux -L gmux ls

You do not need to install or learn tmux to use Tortie. The app carries the local runtime it needs; the command above is only for people who already use tmux and want to inspect the private server directly.

A reboot is different

A Mac restart ends every running process. Tortie does not pretend otherwise. It saves session snapshots, including bounded scrollback and the information needed to prepare a supported agent's own resume command.

Choose Restore. Tortie recreates the session and its working directory.
Review the recovered terminal. Saved output is replayed so you can see what happened before the restart.
Confirm the conversation resume. When Tortie has exact resume information, it types the agent's command and waits. Press Enter to run it.

Recovery has different levels

Recovery result	What returns
Live reconnect	The original process, terminal, and conversation are still running.
Agent resume ready	Saved output returns and the agent's native resume command waits for your confirmation.
Transcript restored	Saved output returns, but Tortie cannot safely resume the agent conversation.
Shell only	The folder and terminal return without a conversation claim.

Removed sessions remain recoverable

Tortie retains removed sessions in Past Sessions for 90 days. Recovery still depends on the saved state and the agent's own resume support.