Rift Panel

WORKSPACE

Sessions

Sessions are the individual processes running inside panels. Rift Panel supports three session types: Claude Code, Codex, and Shell.

Each session is backed by a real PTY (pseudo-terminal) process managed by the Rust backend. Sessions run independently — output from one session never interferes with another. You can have as many concurrent sessions as your system resources allow.

Session Types

  • Shell — A standard terminal session using your default shell (bash, zsh, PowerShell, etc.). Supports everything a regular terminal does.
  • Claude Code — Launches the Claude Code CLI in a dedicated session. The terminal is pre-configured for Claude Code's interactive workflow.
  • Codex — Launches the OpenAI Codex CLI. Similar to Claude Code but configured for the Codex interaction model.

Creating Sessions

Press Ctrl+N to open the new session dialog. The dialog lets you:

  1. Select a session type — Choose Shell, Claude Code, or Codex from the type selector.
  2. Choose a working directory — Browse or type a path. The session's PTY process will start in this directory. Recent directories are shown for quick access.
  3. Set an optional label — Give the session a custom name that appears in the tab bar instead of the default process name.

Press Enter or click "Create" to launch the session. It opens in the currently focused panel. If the panel already has sessions, the new one is added as a tab.

Use Ctrl+K to open the session switcher — a fuzzy-search dialog that lets you jump to any open session by name or working directory.

Session Tabs

Each panel can host multiple sessions as tabs. The tab bar appears at the top of every panel that has more than one session. Tabs show the session label (or process name) and a close button.

  • Ctrl+Tab — Switch to the next tab in the current panel
  • Ctrl+Shift+Tab — Switch to the previous tab

Tabs can be reordered by dragging. You can also drag a tab from one panel to another to move a session between panels without interrupting the running process.

Session Persistence

Rift Panel automatically saves the full workspace state to local storage. This includes:

  • The panel tree layout (split directions, ratios, and nesting)
  • Session metadata (type, working directory, label) for every open session
  • Tab order within each panel
  • The currently focused panel and active tab

When Rift Panel launches, it reads this saved state and restores the workspace. Panel layouts are restored immediately. Sessions are re-created with the same type and working directory — though the process itself is new, so command history from the previous invocation is not carried over.

Scrollback buffer contents are not persisted between restarts. If you need to preserve terminal output, use your shell's built-in logging or redirect output to a file.