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Session restore

Quit Orca, reopen it, and pick up exactly where you left off — worktrees, splits, scrollback, focused tab.

When you close Orca, the next launch rehydrates the whole workspace: every open worktree, every terminal split, the scrollback in each pane, and the tab you had focused. You shouldn't have to remember which agents you had running on which branches — that's Orca's job.

Restart Orca and the session — terminals, splits, scrollback, focused tab — comes back intact.
Restart Orca and the session — terminals, splits, scrollback, focused tab — comes back intact.

What gets restored

  • Open worktrees — every worktree you had open in the sidebar.
  • Tabs and splits — pane layout per worktree, including nested splits and which tab was focused.
  • Running agent processes — agents you had running keep running across an Orca quit. A background daemon owns the PTYs, so closing the app window doesn't kill Claude Code, Codex, or any other agent CLI mid-task. On next launch, Orca warm-reattaches to the same processes.
  • Terminal scrollback — the buffer in each terminal, including output produced while Orca was closed.
  • Focused worktree and tab — Orca opens to the same view you closed.

What doesn't get restored

The daemon dies when the host does, so anything that takes the whole machine down — reboot, OS update, kernel panic, hard power-off — ends every running agent. On next launch the worktrees, tabs, splits, and last-known scrollback come back, but the agent processes themselves are gone. Re-run the agent in any tab to keep going.

A daemon crash while Orca is closed has the same effect for any sessions it was holding, but the layout and scrollback still restore on next launch.

When restore runs

Session restore runs on every launch. The cases divide by whether the daemon survived the gap or not:

Daemon survives → agents keep running:

  • Cmd-Q — the normal way to quit. Agents keep working in the background.
  • Auto-updater relaunch — Orca restarts to install an update; agents are unaffected.
  • App crash — if Orca itself crashes, the daemon keeps your sessions alive for warm reattach on next launch.

Daemon dies → agents are gone, layout still restores:

  • Host reboot — laptop restart, OS update, kernel panic, hard power-off. Worktrees, tabs, splits, and the last-persisted scrollback still come back on next launch.

Next steps