Sessions

A Computer is a persistent cloud workstation, and the work on it happens in sessions. Each session has:

• Its own browser window on the Computer's desktop, or none for shell-only work.
• Its own shell, which keeps its current directory and exported variables from one command to the next.
• Its own working directory for files, inputs and outputs.
• Its own agent, which remembers earlier turns in the session.

Sessions share the Computer's identity. Every session uses the same browser profile, so a site you sign in to in one session is signed in for the others too. They also share the skills the Computer has learned.

A Computer runs several sessions at once, so separate workflows can use one identity without signing in again. Sessions don't see each other's tabs or files. When you stop the Computer, its sessions end with it. A persistent Computer keeps its saved browser state and learned skills, so after it starts again you create new sessions on the same identity.

Names and labels

Every session has a name, the handle you use to find and address it. You don't need to choose one: leave it out and the Computer picks a friendly name such as brave-otter-9f3a1c, unique on that Computer. To choose your own, use up to 64 letters, digits, hyphens and underscores. A name already in use is rejected, so two sessions never collide.

A session can also carry a label, free text for the people who operate it (checkout-flow, nightly-scrape). A label is a description, not an address: it doesn't have to be unique, and the API never finds a session by it.

Kinds of session

• A browser session has a Chrome window on the Computer's desktop. Pine's agent or your code drives it, and a person can watch or take over.
• A shell-only session has no window. Use it for shell work such as curl, jq, file processing or running code, where a screen adds nothing.
• A blind session has a window only a person uses, for example to type a password or an MFA code. Pine's agent and browser automation can't see or drive it.

Where to go next

• Agent: give Pine's agent a goal, follow its events, steer it or answer its questions.
• Skills: turn a finished workflow into a reviewed skill that later runs follow.
• Files and shell: the working directory, files you give the agent, the artifacts it produces, and the shell.
• Web SDK: show the desktop in your app and let a person take control.
• Persistence: what survives a stop and start.
• Tokens and scopes: the pk_, ct_, ps_ and dt_ tokens and who holds each.

The routes behind all of this are in the Computer API.