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.

• 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.
• Green - ready. A fresh session at its prompt that has not taken a turn yet, nothing asked of you.
• Yellow - being read for you. Either the Wingman is reading the finished turn, or a voice-mode session's spoken summary is still being generated. The card turns red once there is something for you to act on.
• Purple - running in the background. The session is sitting on its own long task, such as a build.
• Orange - transcribing. A dictated message is being turned into text and sent in.
• Slate - answering to somebody else. Three kinds of session recede to slate when they stop: a Worker another session is driving, any session you declared an Architect, and any session a schedule started. Their "needs you" is muted so they never nag you - whoever is driving them deals with it. (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.
• Ready - a fresh session that has not taken a turn yet.
• Snoozed - either you set the session aside (see below), or the session answers to somebody else and has stopped: a Worker with a live supervisor, a declared Architect, or a session a schedule started. 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.
• Background - running its own long task.
• 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 until its narration is ready, 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). The Gateway keeps trying; 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.