Why Session Persistence Matters for AI Development
You're deep into debugging a complex issue. The AI has been helping you trace through the code, you've built up context over twenty messages, and then... your laptop dies. Or you accidentally close the terminal. Or macOS decides it's time for an update.
Gone. All of it.
Context is Everything
The power of AI assistants comes from their ability to maintain context throughout a conversation. They remember what files you've discussed, what approaches you've tried, what your codebase looks like. Losing that context means starting over - re-explaining your problem, re-sharing code snippets, rebuilding that shared understanding.
How Cliio Solves This
Cliio uses tmux under the hood to run your AI CLI sessions. Tmux is a terminal multiplexer that runs sessions in the background, completely independent of the Cliio app window. This means:
- Close Cliio? Sessions keep running.
- Restart your Mac? Sessions survive (as long as you don't fully shut down).
- Cliio crashes? Just reopen and reconnect.
Your scrollback history is preserved too. Open an agent you used yesterday and scroll up to see exactly what you discussed.
Getting Set Up
Session persistence requires tmux. If you're on macOS, install it with Homebrew:
brew install tmuxThat's it. Cliio automatically detects tmux and enables persistence for all your agents.