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Tau

Sessions

Every Tau conversation is a session, saved to disk so you can come back to it. Sessions are stored as append-only JSONL under ~/.tau/sessions/, organized per working directory, so resume flows focus on the project you’re in.

Listing sessions

Section titled “Listing sessions”
Terminal window
tau sessions

Each row shows the session id, title, model, and working directory.

Resuming

Section titled “Resuming”

From the shell:

Terminal window
tau --resume <session-id>

From inside the TUI:

/resume            # open a picker of past sessions
/resume <id>       # resume a specific session

To deliberately start fresh instead of resuming, use tau --new-session (or /new in the TUI).

Branching from history (/tree)

Section titled “Branching from history (/tree)”

A session is a tree, not just a line — so you can go back and try a different path without losing what you had.

Run /tree to open the session tree, then select an earlier entry:

  • Enter — continue from that point, preserving the existing branch.
  • S — ask the active model for a structured summary of the messages you’re leaving behind before moving the active point.
  • C — provide custom focus instructions for that one summary.

If a summary request fails, Tau falls back to a deterministic summary.

Renaming

Section titled “Renaming”
/name My refactor session

The new name appears in the /resume picker and id completions.

Exporting

Section titled “Exporting”

Export a session to a shareable file:

/export                              # HTML, into the current directory
/export --format jsonl               # raw JSONL
/export --format html report.html    # explicit destination

Or from the shell:

Terminal window
tau export <session-id>                     # HTML (default)
tau export <session-id> session.html
tau export <session-id> --format jsonl

The source can be an indexed session id or a path to a JSONL session file. HTML exports are self-contained and include the preserved session tree plus the transcript in storage order.

Where sessions live

Section titled “Where sessions live”
~/.tau/sessions/<cleaned-path>-<short-hash>/

For example, /Users/you/repos/tau becomes something like repos-tau-a1b2c3. The original JSONL is append-only — compaction and branching change the active view, never the recorded history. See Configuration for the exact layout.