netclaw sessions

Pick up where you left off. netclaw sessions opens a terminal UI (TUI) listing your recent sessions — scroll, hit Enter, and you’re back in the conversation. For scripts, --once and --json dump session data to stdout instead.

Requires a running daemon. If it’s not up, start it with netclaw daemon start (or run netclaw init which starts it for you).

This command only lists sessions — there’s no delete or cleanup here. Session lifecycle is managed by the daemon’s retention policy.

Usage

netclaw sessions [options]

Options

Flag	Description	Default
--once	List sessions to stdout and exit (no TUI)	TUI mode
--json	Output as JSON array (implies --once)	Plain text

TUI mode

netclaw sessions

Full-screen session browser. Each entry shows:

[cli] Deploy troubleshooting (8 turns, 23m ago)
[slack] Weekly standup recap (3 turns, 2h ago)
[cli] Config migration (12 turns, 1d ago)

The channel tag (cli, slack, etc.) shows where the session originated. The daemon returns up to 50 of your most recent sessions.

Keyboard shortcuts

Key	Action
↑ / K	Move selection up
↓ / J	Move selection down
Enter	Resume selected session (opens chat)
N	Start a new netclaw chat session
Ctrl+Q	Quit
Escape	Quit

Enter drops you straight into netclaw chat with that session’s full history loaded. When no sessions exist, you’ll see “No sessions found. Press Enter to start a new chat.”

Single-shot mode

Plain text output

netclaw sessions --once

Lists all sessions to stdout, one per line:

a1b2c3d4  Deploy troubleshooting  [active]  turns=8  last=2026-05-03 14:22
e5f6g7h8  Weekly standup recap    [inactive]  turns=3  last=2026-05-03 11:45

Active means the session is held in memory and responds instantly. Inactive means it’s persisted to disk — resuming one replays its history, which takes a moment.

The session ID in the first column is what you pass to netclaw chat --resume:

netclaw sessions --once | head -1 | awk '{print $1}' | xargs netclaw chat --resume

JSON output

netclaw sessions --json

Outputs a JSON array of session objects:

[
  {
    "persistenceId": "session-a1b2c3d4",
    "channel": "cli",
    "title": "Deploy troubleshooting",
    "status": "active",
    "turnCount": 8,
    "createdAt": 1746268800000,
    "lastActivity": 1746282120000,
    "logPath": "/home/user/.netclaw/logs/sessions/a1b2c3d4"
  }
]

JSON fields

Field	Type	Description
persistenceId	string	Full internal persistence ID (prefixed with session-)
channel	string	Origin channel (cli, slack, discord, etc.)
title	string?	Auto-generated or null for untitled sessions
description	string?	Session description, if set
status	string	active (in memory) or inactive (persisted to disk)
turnCount	int	Number of completed conversation turns
createdAt	long	Creation time (Unix milliseconds)
lastActivity	long	Last activity time (Unix milliseconds)
logPath	string?	Path to per-session log directory
lastInputTokens	long?	Input tokens from the last recorded turn

Note that sessionId is not included in the JSON — it’s computed at runtime. To derive the short ID from persistenceId, strip the session- prefix:

# Requires jq
netclaw sessions --json | jq -r '.[0].persistenceId | ltrimstr("session-")'

Active sessions have their actor materialized in memory — they respond without any startup cost. Inactive sessions are persisted to disk and fully recoverable; resuming one replays its history, which takes a moment depending on the number of turns.

Exit codes

Code	Meaning
0	Sessions listed successfully
1	Daemon unavailable or request failed

In TUI mode, a failed daemon connection shows “Failed to connect to daemon. Is it running?” In --once mode, the error looks different:

[FAIL] sessions: unable to reach daemon at <endpoint>: <message>
run 'netclaw daemon start' and retry.

Examples

Find sessions with many turns

# Requires jq
netclaw sessions --json | jq '[.[] | select(.turnCount > 10)] | sort_by(-.lastActivity)'

Resume the most recently active session

# Requires jq — derives session ID by stripping the "session-" prefix
netclaw chat --resume "$(netclaw sessions --json | jq -r '.[0].persistenceId | ltrimstr("session-")')"

Related commands

• netclaw chat — Pass --resume <id> to jump straight into a specific session
• netclaw chat -p — Headless mode with --resume for scripted multi-turn conversations
• netclaw status — Check daemon health if sessions can’t connect
• netclaw stats — Token usage and session count metrics

Resources

• jq manual — filter and transform --json output
• Akka.NET persistence — how session state survives daemon restarts