Sessions

A session is a single conversation thread with Atlas. Sessions are automatically saved to your vault as you chat, so your history is always there when you come back.

Auto-Resume

If you close Atlas and return within 4 hours, your previous conversation automatically picks up where you left off. You’ll see the full history in the chat panel, and Atlas still has the context from your earlier exchange.

After 4 hours, Atlas considers the session finished and will start a fresh one next time you open the app (or when your auto-reset policy triggers — see below).

Session Topic Names

After 2 or more exchanges in a conversation, Atlas quietly generates a short topic name for the session in the background. This name appears in the session history so you can find old conversations later.

You don’t need to name sessions yourself — Atlas handles it automatically based on what you talked about.

Where Sessions Are Stored

Your conversation history is saved as files in your vault:

<your vault>/atlas/memory/sessions/

Each session is stored as a JSONL file (one message per line) with a small metadata sidecar file. These are plain files on your computer — you can read them, back them up, or move them just like any other file in your vault.

Note

Sessions are stored locally in your vault. They are not uploaded to the Atlas cloud. Your conversation history stays on your machine.

Starting a New Session

To start fresh, click the New Chat button at the top of the chat panel. This ends the current session and starts a new one.

You can also configure Atlas to reset sessions automatically.

Auto-Reset Policies

In Settings > AI > Session Reset, you can choose how sessions reset:

Policy	Behavior
Manual	Sessions only reset when you click “New Chat”. This is the default.
Daily	Atlas starts a new session at a configured time each day (default: 4:00 AM). Good if you prefer a clean slate each morning.
Idle	Atlas starts a new session after a period of inactivity (default: 2 hours). Useful if you have many short, unrelated conversations.

Tip

If you find your chat context getting cluttered with old topics, try switching to Daily or Idle reset. Starting fresh regularly keeps Atlas focused and responses more relevant.

What Happens When a Session Ends

When a session ends — whether manually or via auto-reset — Atlas does a few things automatically:

1. Writes a session summary — a short summary of the conversation is saved to your long-term memory in atlas/memory/long-term/
2. Consolidates learnings — Atlas reviews the session for anything worth remembering and updates your facts file if needed
3. Updates your user snapshot — the short profile summary that appears in every system prompt is refreshed to reflect anything new Atlas learned about you

This means the things you talked about in one session can inform how Atlas responds in future sessions, even after the conversation history is gone.

Caution

If you delete session files from your vault manually, the conversation history will be gone permanently. The session summary saved to long-term memory will still exist, but the full transcript won’t. Only delete session files if you’re sure you don’t need them.

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