Session cards and states

Every session is a card in the Director sidebar, and the card is designed to answer one question without a click: does this session need me right now? Two signals do the work - a colored status square on the left edge of the card, and an activity label in plain words underneath the name.

What is on a card

• Status square - the at-a-glance color (below). It is also the drag handle for reordering cards.
• Session number - a three-digit badge, handy when you drive sessions by voice or from the phone ("answer 214").
• Name - the custom name you gave the session, or the repository folder name.
• Agent badge - a colored pill naming the agent (for example Claude Code).
• Activity label - what the session is doing, in words. The full set is listed below.
• Waiting timer - when a session needs you, the card shows how long it has been waiting. This is the number that used to be invisible - the forty minutes an agent sat blocked while you were in another window.
• Changes badge - an amber "N chg" count of uncommitted file changes in the session's repository. See source control.
• Queue badge - how many prompts are queued for this session; click it to preview them.

The status square colors

The square uses one color scale everywhere - the Director, the browser Cockpit, and your phone all show the same color for the same session. In the Cockpit and on the phone, a What do the colours mean? link on the session list opens the same meanings as a short legend, read from the Gateway.

• Blue - working. The agent is busy (or still starting). Leave it alone. Nothing outranks working: a session that is working is blue, whatever else is going on.
• Red - needs you. The agent stopped and is waiting for an answer, a permission decision, or its next task. These are the cards to click. When the Wingman has read the stop, the label is its own one-line summary of what is being asked.
• Green - ready. A brand-new session at its prompt that has not taken a turn yet, nothing asked of you.
• Cyan - done. The session stopped and the Wingman judged that it finished: the work is done, or it is only reporting something and asks you nothing. The label leads with Done or Report. The card stays in view but is not counted as needing you. A snooze that ends with nothing new also comes back cyan, labelled Snooze ended, nothing new.
• Yellow - being read for you. The Wingman or the Director is reading the finished turn, or a voice-mode session's spoken summary is not ready yet. The card turns red once there is something for you to act on - including when voice mode gives up on the summary.
• Purple - carrying on. The session stopped, but the Wingman judged it will continue on its own - it is waiting on a build, a timer, or sessions it started. If it has not continued by the time it said it would, it turns red and says so.
• Orange - transcribing. A dictated message is being turned into text and sent in.
• Slate - answering to somebody else. A session that another live session is driving recedes to slate when it stops. Its "needs you" is muted so it never nags you - the session driving it deals with it. If that session exits, the muting ends and the stopped session asks for you again. (The Cockpit's fleet map still labels this dot Sub-agent in its legend.)
• Dark red - crashed. The agent process ended unexpectedly.
• Gray - snoozed, exited, or indeterminate. One gray, deliberately, for all three: read the label under the name to tell a session you snoozed (Snoozed) from one whose agent process has ended (Exited) from one whose state cannot be determined (Idle).

The activity labels

The label under the name is the session's state in words:

• Working - mid-task, producing output (also while the agent process is still starting).
• Needs you - stopped and waiting for your answer, a permission decision, or its next task. When the Wingman has read the stop, its own words for what is being asked take this label's place.
• Ready - a fresh session that has not taken a turn yet.
• Snoozed - either you set the session aside (see below), or another live session is driving it and it has stopped. The role badge on the card says which. A session that has ended still reads Exited or Crashed - a dead session never hides behind Snoozed.
• Done and Report - the Wingman judged the stop finished; the rest of the label is its one-line summary.
• Carrying on - the Wingman judged the session will continue by itself. When the Wingman wrote a line of its own, that line is shown instead.
• Snooze ended, nothing new - a snooze ran out and nothing happened while it ran.
• Transcribing - a dictated message is being turned into text. A dictation sent from the phone first reads Uploading from phone.
• Wingman reading - the Wingman is reading the finished turn for you.
• Preparing voice - a voice-mode session's spoken summary is being generated. Once the wait passes a minute the card carries its age, as Preparing voice (4m).
• Exited - the agent process has ended.
• Crashed - the agent process ended unexpectedly.
• Idle - the fallback when the session's state cannot be determined.

When the voice does not come

A voice-mode session that is waiting on you holds yellow while its narration is on the way, and the label says what is actually happening rather than promising forever:

• Voice did not arrive - three minutes passed with no narration, so the card stops saying it is on the way and says so, with the wait beside it (Voice did not arrive after 5m). Once voice mode has given up, the card stops holding yellow and turns red with those words, so the session asks for you instead of waiting on audio that is not coming. You can read the turn instead.
• Nothing to read aloud - the session is waiting for you on a prompt or a menu rather than on a text answer, so there is genuinely nothing to narrate.
• No narration yet - no spoken summary for this turn has been made yet.
• Voice service down - the speech service is unavailable. Nothing is wrong with your session.
• Voice needs credit and Monthly limit reached - the account condition behind the missing audio, so you can fix it instead of waiting.
• Update DevThrottle - the machine that owns the session is running a build too old to send its conversation up, so there is nothing stored to read aloud.

Order and snooze

Cards stay in the order you put them - drag the status square to rearrange. And when a session should stop competing for your attention without being closed, snooze it from the card's menu: Snooze uses your default length, Snooze for picks a length on the spot, and Unsnooze brings it back. A snoozed session shows the gray square and the Snoozed label, with the time remaining beside it, and the Director stops counting it as needing you. When a snooze runs out on its own, the card carries a Snooze ended badge if the session is still waiting.

Where to go next

• Starting and steering agents - act on the card that needs you.
• Source control and history - what the changes badge is counting.