Choose your experience
Keep the interface minimal or bring the full multiplexer and agent controls forward.
On this page
Four presets, one terminal
Choose a preset in Settings → Terminal → Experience. New installations start in Persistent Terminal. An older settings file without an experienceMode value retains Full Terminal on upgrade, so existing controls do not disappear.
| Mode | Prefix / status line by default | Sessions after a clean quit |
|---|---|---|
| Plain Terminal | Off / off | Ephemeral unless individually pinned |
| Persistent Terminal | Off / off | Kept running |
| Full Terminal | On / on | Kept running |
| Agent Workspace | Off / off; optional | Kept running |
Agents remain available in every mode. Agent Workspace puts those workflows up front rather than making them exclusive to that preset.
Understand what keeps a session alive
A session survives a clean quit when the global Keep sessions running setting is enabled OR that individual session is pinned as persistent. Switching to Plain normally turns the global setting off; the other three presets turn it on.
Pin a session by right-clicking it in the sidebar and choosing Keep running after quit. The CLI can promote or demote an individual session:
harness-cli promote-session --session "my-project"
harness-cli demote-session --session "my-project"Change controls independently
Command prefix and Status line each have Auto, On, and Off overrides under Settings → Terminal → Experience. Auto follows the preset. On or Off lets you choose either control without switching the entire experience.
Full Terminal defaults to Ctrl-A as its prefix. Change the key in Settings → Keys; clearing it disables the prefix entirely. Press the prefix and then ? to see its live cheatsheet.
Check the effective quit policy
Experience modes are presets, not guarantees that override your choices. The current Keep sessions running setting and per-session persistence pins determine what survives a clean quit. The Settings summary reports the effective policy. Prefix and status-line overrides are independent of persistence.