Sessions & History

Every conversation with Atlas is saved as a session — a complete transcript stored in your vault as plain files. Sessions persist across app restarts, auto-resume when you come back, and are summarized when they end so their key points live on in long-term memory.

Where Sessions Are Stored

<your vault>/atlas/memory/sessions/

Each session consists of two files:

• <session-id>.jsonl — the full conversation transcript, one message per line
• <session-id>.meta.json — session metadata: topic, start time, duration

These are plain files on your computer. You can open and read the JSONL files in any text editor if you want to review a past conversation, or back them up as part of your vault.

Note

Session transcripts are stored locally in your vault. They are not uploaded to Atlas servers.

Auto-Resume

If you close Atlas and come back within 4 hours, your previous session picks up automatically. The full conversation history is loaded back into the chat panel and Atlas has context from the earlier exchange.

After 4 hours, Atlas treats the session as finished and starts a new one. You can also start a new session manually at any time with the New Chat button.

Session Topics

After 2 or more exchanges, Atlas generates a short topic name for the session in the background — something like “Q2 planning discussion” or “Python debugging help.” This appears in the session history so you can find specific conversations later.

You don’t pick the topic; Atlas infers it from what you talked about.

The Full Session Lifecycle

1. Start    → New session created, or recent session resumed
2. Chat     → Messages saved to JSONL as you go
3. Topic    → Auto-generated after 2+ exchanges
4. Compact  → If conversation gets too long, older messages are summarized
5. End      → Session summary written, learnings consolidated, snapshot updated

Context Compaction

When a conversation runs long, the context window can fill up. When that happens, Atlas compacts the history: older messages are summarized into a short block that takes less space, letting the conversation continue.

Before compacting, Atlas extracts any important facts from the older messages and saves them to facts.md so nothing valuable is lost. The summary replaces the raw messages, but the original transcript file in your vault is not changed.

Session End

When a session ends — manually via New Chat, or automatically via your reset policy — Atlas runs the end-of-session process:

1. Writes a session summary to atlas/memory/long-term/session-*.md
2. Consolidates learnings — reviews the session for new facts to save to facts.md
3. Updates your user snapshot — refreshes the 3–5 sentence summary in user.md if something changed

This means things you discussed in one session are available in future sessions, even after the transcript is gone.

Correction Detection

If you say something like:

“Actually, I moved to Denver last month.” “Wait, I meant the Henderson project, not Harrison.” “I should mention — I’m no longer at that company.”

Atlas detects these correction patterns and offers to update your memory. You’ll see a prompt asking if you want to save the correction. If you confirm, Atlas uses the update_memory tool to fix the relevant entry in facts.md or user.md.

Tip

You don’t need to wait for Atlas to detect a correction. You can always say “Update my memory: I now live in Denver” or “Forget that I work at Acme Corp” and Atlas will handle it immediately.

Managing Old Sessions

Session files accumulate over time. They’re small (text only), so storage is rarely a concern, but you can delete old session files from your vault if you want to clean up.

Caution

Deleting a session file removes the full transcript permanently. The session summary in long-term memory will still exist, but the complete conversation is gone. Only delete sessions you’re certain you no longer need.

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Next: Customizing Behavior