[DOCS] Agent view omits 5-minute retirement for empty idle background sessions

Status Fixed / completed

Maintainer reply ✓ Yes — bcherny

Activity 3 comments · opened May 14, 2026 · closed Aug 17, 2026

💡 Likely answer: A maintainer (bcherny, collaborator) responded on this thread — see the highlighted reply below.

Documentation Type

Incorrect/outdated documentation

Documentation Location

https://code.claude.com/docs/en/agent-view

Section/Topic

"Attach to a session" and "The supervisor process"

Current Documentation

The docs currently say:

Press ← on an empty prompt to detach and return to agent view. Detaching never stops a background session: ←, Ctrl+C, Ctrl+D, Ctrl+Z, and /exit all leave it running. After you've dispatched or backgrounded a session, pressing ← on an empty prompt works from any Claude Code session, not only ones you attached to from agent view. It backgrounds the current session and opens agent view with that session pre-selected, so you can switch sessions without leaving the terminal. Once a session finishes and sits unattached for about an hour, the supervisor stops its process to free resources. The transcript and state stay on disk, and the next time you attach, peek, or reply, the supervisor starts a fresh process from where it left off.

What's Wrong or Missing?

The session-lifecycle description appears outdated for v2.1.141.

The v2.1.141 release notes say empty idle background sessions left over from ← are now automatically retired by the daemon after 5 minutes.

The current page explains that ← backgrounds the current session and says detaching leaves the background session running, then separately describes a roughly one-hour supervisor stop for finished unattached sessions. It does not mention the new 5-minute retirement rule for empty idle sessions created by ←, so readers do not get the current cleanup behavior or the exception to the broader lifecycle description.

Suggested Improvement

Add a short note in the ← detach/background explanation or in "The supervisor process" section clarifying that empty idle background sessions left over from ← are automatically retired by the daemon after about 5 minutes in v2.1.141 and later.

That note should distinguish this cleanup rule from the existing "about an hour" process stop for finished unattached sessions so users understand why an empty leftover session may disappear much sooner.

Impact

Medium - Makes feature difficult to understand

Additional Context

Affected Pages:

| Page | Line(s) | Context |
|------|---------|---------|
| https://code.claude.com/docs/en/agent-view | 155-159, 322-328, 372 | ← detach/background behavior and current supervisor retirement description |

Total scope: 1 page affected

Version context: v2.1.141 release notes say empty idle background sessions left over from ← are retired after 5 minutes.

View original on GitHub ↗

3 Comments

coygeek · 4 months ago

Verified against the latest docs; this still appears unresolved.

bcherny collaborator · 1 month ago

Thanks for flagging this. The agent view docs now cover this: the page describes that an empty row left over from pressing ← that was never given a prompt is removed after about five minutes, alongside the roughly one-hour idle stop for finished sessions (with the exceptions for claude --bg sessions and sessions waiting on a setup prompt).

See https://code.claude.com/docs/en/agent-view ("The supervisor process") and the changelog at https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md. Closing as done.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

github-actions[bot] · 8 days ago

This issue has been automatically locked since it was closed and has not had any activity for 7 days. If you're experiencing a similar issue, please file a new issue and reference this one if it's relevant.