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Sessions

Sessions is the main working surface in Knotic.

If you use Knotic every day, this is where you will spend most of your time: asking questions about the codebase, requesting edits, attaching files, reviewing tool activity, and continuing work over multiple conversations.

What Sessions Is For

Use Sessions when you want Knotic to work directly with your current project.

Typical uses:

  • inspect a code path before making changes
  • ask for an implementation or refactor
  • review a bug and propose a fix
  • attach files or images to explain a task
  • run a reusable Skill with a slash command

How Sessions Works

Each conversation is tied to project context.

  • Knotic stores long-lived project knowledge in .knotic/brain.loom.
  • Knotic stores session-specific context in .knotic/<chatId>.knot.
  • Messages, tool activity, and conversation history are kept available so you can continue work instead of restarting from scratch.

When you send a message, Knotic builds a working context from your prompt, project knowledge, session state, and any attachments. Depending on the task, it can read files, search the codebase, apply edits, call tools, or invoke Skills.

How To Use Sessions

  1. Open Sessions with Ctrl+Alt+I.
  2. Create a conversation or switch to an existing one.
  3. Write a concrete request.
  4. Add files or images when the task needs extra context.
  5. Review the answer and the tool activity before moving to the next step.

You can also invoke a Skill directly from chat with a slash command such as /doc-writer or /security-auditor, as long as that Skill is available in the workspace and marked as user-invocable.

How To Read The UI

The Sessions UI is built around a few practical areas:

  • conversation history: used to create, switch, archive, or delete conversations
  • message timeline: shows user messages, model responses, tool calls, and streamed output
  • composer: where you write prompts and add attachments
  • provider and model controls: used to choose the runtime for the current work
  • action area: used for related flows such as opening Context Lens or handling diffs and remote session actions

When Knotic is working, the timeline is not just chat text. It also shows tool execution and other runtime events, so you can understand how the answer was produced.

When To Use Sessions Instead of Other Surfaces

Use Sessions when the task is operational and you want Knotic to act on the repository now.

  • Use Context Lens when you want to inspect or trim the context before a model call.
  • Use Brainstorming when the problem is still open and you want alternatives first.
  • Use Architect when the work should be broken into a plan with explicit steps.

Good Practices

  • Start with one concrete task, not a vague goal.
  • Reuse the same conversation when the work is part of the same thread.
  • Open Context Lens if results feel noisy or over-contextualized.
  • Use Skills for repeatable work patterns instead of rewriting the same prompt every time.