Ghostty Use

ghostty-use

Capture identifiable Claude Code and Codex terminal sessions before a reboot and reopen recorded IDs afterwards. Manual snapshots grade liveness; automatic backups store recovery metadata with explicit partial coverage and unknown liveness.

Ghostty on macOS has no session-restoration CLI or AppleScript tab dictionary (verified on Ghostty 1.3.1, 2026-10-04), so this skill walks a practical loop around that limit: manual ps inventory → liveness-graded snapshot → keystroke-paste restore → automatic reconciliation that makes every paste failure visible.

Entry decision tree

Codex account switch

Preserve all Ghostty Codex sessions before the user manually switches ChatGPT accounts, then reopen the original session IDs in one batch. Exclude Claude Code. Read codex-account-switch.md before this route. Use scripts/ghostty_session.py switch-prepare and switch-restore; the bundled scripts/ghostty_switch.py owns fixed-manifest selection, account/process checks, duplicate-safe retries and separate authentication reporting.

python3 <skill-dir>/scripts/ghostty_session.py switch-prepare
# User: finish work, exit the saved Codex TUIs and manually switch account.
python3 <skill-dir>/scripts/ghostty_session.py switch-restore

Default to tabs in one window; use --layout windows only when independent windows are requested. Keep the printed fixed manifest through the handoff. Treat unresolved capture, unchanged account or still-running old processes as an incomplete handoff. Never terminate processes or switch credentials through this route. Ask for a bounded Ghostty keyboard/mouse handoff before actual opening; --dry-run and --check remain read-only. Distinguish reopened IDs from new-account requests that worked: the script reports authentication as not_checked and sends no test prompt.

Quick start

# Before quitting (from any directory):
python3 <skill-dir>/scripts/ghostty_session.py snapshot

# After restart (from any directory; needs Accessibility permission for keystrokes):
python3 <skill-dir>/scripts/ghostty_session.py restore        # manual: active only; automatic: full recorded set
python3 <skill-dir>/scripts/ghostty_session.py restore --all  # include waiting/quota/dead/stale/unknown records

The snapshot lands in ~/.ghostty-session/snapshots/ (home-relative, survives reboot). The report accounts for every live TUI: captured sessions plus an unresolved section for fresh tabs that have no transcript yet — a session count lower than the tab count is explained there, not silently lost. restore skips already-live IDs by default. It finishes with a bounded auto-check that prints N/M present, a manual reopen command and a retry command containing only missing IDs. Read that result before declaring success; per-tab SENT (unverified) is a paste acknowledgement, not proof that a session reopened. Re-running the same manifest opens only the IDs still missing. --dry-run prints commands without GUI actions.

Automatic change-only backups

Read automatic-snapshots.md before installing or operating scripts/ghostty_watch.py. It saves only changed restore state and keeps all prior versions. Unchanged rounds write no snapshot or routine log. Automatic manifests cover Ghostty process descendants without transcript reads; their liveness is explicitly unknown and restore selects the whole recorded set. UUID-less TUIs remain unresolved in automatic manifests — the watcher's bounded scan deliberately reads no transcripts; manual snapshot/check/restore resolve them (see the anchor bullet below). Partial observations preserve prior missing IDs conservatively. The watcher never opens apps or tabs. Manual snapshots keep their active-only restore default.

No suitable snapshot: reconstruct the recovery manifest

For Codex identity and indexed recovery, use the maintained daymade-claude-code:read-codex-history dependency. Resolve that Skill's directory from the current host; install its daymade-claude-code plugin through the host's ordinary marketplace flow when authorized and absent. The script discovers a source checkout or a separately installed sibling read-codex-history; other layouts use --history-reader <reader-skill-dir> or GHOSTTY_CODEX_HISTORY_READER. Missing reader or state index fails explicitly; do not replace it with a rollout corpus scan.

# Review candidates without writing state or opening tabs:
python3 <skill-dir>/scripts/ghostty_session.py reconstruct \
  --history-reader <reader-skill-dir> --recent-hours 72 --limit 100 --dry-run

# Build one chosen set in a NEW file; --only accepts unambiguous ID prefixes:
python3 <skill-dir>/scripts/ghostty_session.py reconstruct \
  --history-reader <reader-skill-dir> --since <YYYY-MM-DD> \
  --only <id-prefix-1> <id-prefix-2> --out <recovery-manifest.json>

# Restore the full selected set in one invocation, including waiting/quota rows:
python3 <skill-dir>/scripts/ghostty_session.py restore \
  --snapshot <recovery-manifest.json> --all

Reconstruction merges the optional --snapshot (otherwise latest, if present) with bounded recent indexed Codex candidates. It verifies internal rollout identity using the owning reader and marks each row past-snapshot or indexed-terminal-candidate. Terminal evidence is source=cli or originator=codex-tui; actual TUIs can report source=vscode. --terminal-source and --terminal-originator customize those accepted metadata values. Subagents are excluded by the owning inventory's metadata, not by underscores in filenames. --codex-home selects a nondefault Codex store.

Past membership proves only that a session appeared in that snapshot. Indexed terminal candidates prove terminal origin, not that the tab was live at shutdown. Review timestamps/titles and select the intended set before restore. --limit is a hard cap on indexed candidates inspected; widen discovery bounds only when needed. No snapshot means Claude membership remains unknown; reconstruction does not discover Claude sessions. Preserve explicit Claude records from a known snapshot rather than claiming an exhaustive recovery.

The new manifest never changes snapshots/latest.json and refuses to overwrite an existing output. Exit 0 means the selected evidence was verified; exit 1 means the manifest lists rejected candidates requiring attention; exit 2 means invalid input or unavailable evidence. Dry-run output is JSON for inspection.