# Thread lifecycle

> Working with companions that act on their own means many threads at once. This guide explains where a thread lives, how it moves when it needs you, and when it closes — so you always know which threads are waiting on you and which are running on their own.

## Where a thread lives

Every piece of work is a thread, and each thread sits in one of the three tabs (see [Desktop app](https://tamag0.ai/docs/desktop-app.md)):

- **Conversations** — you and a companion, talking. These are yours to drive.
- **Activity** — the companion working on its own: peer agents, scheduled runs, Slack and email handled in the background. It behaves like an inbox — read threads hide by default.
- **Thoughts** — the companion's inner life: introspection, analyses, the traces of its dreams.

The rule of thumb: **Conversations need you, Activity does not — until it does.**

## When a thread needs your attention

A companion working autonomously in Activity will, at some point, hit a decision that belongs to you — an approval, a direction, a judgment call it shouldn't make alone. When that happens the thread is **escalated**: it moves out of Activity and into **Conversations**, so it lands in front of you instead of waiting unnoticed in the background.

This is the single signal to trust: **anything that needs a decision from you surfaces in Conversations.** You never have to go digging through Activity to find out what needs a reply — the work that needs you comes to you.

The reverse also holds. A thread you were in that no longer needs you — because it is now waiting on a peer agent, on a CI run, or on a scheduled follow-up — steps back into Activity and continues on its own. You are only ever pulled in when there is a real decision to make.

## How a thread moves

Across its life a thread is in one of a few plain states:

- **Working** — actively running, in Activity. No action needed; a live pulse shows it's in progress.
- **Waiting on you** — escalated to Conversations. Your turn.
- **Waiting on something else** — a peer agent's reply, an external signal like a CI run or a pull-request status, or a scheduled wake-up. It sits in Activity and resumes the moment that signal fires (see [Scheduled tasks & watchdog](https://tamag0.ai/docs/scheduled-tasks.md)).
- **Resolved** — the work is done and delivered.
- **Closed** — set aside because the work became irrelevant before it could land, often by the watchdog cleaning up stale threads (see [Scheduled tasks & watchdog](https://tamag0.ai/docs/scheduled-tasks.md)).
- **Abandoned** — the thread went quiet without ever reaching a conclusion. It's set aside rather than left pretending to be active.

## When a thread resolves

A thread resolves when its work actually **lands** — a pull request opened, a message sent, a document produced and handed to you, a question you acknowledged — not merely because the companion decided it was finished. Delivery, not self-assessment, is what closes a thread. That keeps "resolved" meaning *you got the outcome*, so nothing quietly marks itself done while you're left unaware.

Resolved, closed, and abandoned threads are hidden by default to keep your view clean. One **Show resolved** toggle brings them back whenever you want the history.

## Staying oriented

The sidebar is built for triage across many threads at once:

- **Unread counters** per tab tell you where new activity is.
- **Hide read** keeps Activity behaving like an inbox — only the unread, the running, and the escalated stay in view.
- **Filters and search** — by agent, domain, or priority, plus full-text search.
- **Linked threads** in the context panel keep related work connected, so an escalated thread always leads back to the work that produced it.

The result: you don't monitor your companions. Conversations shows you what needs you, Activity carries what doesn't, and threads that need a decision come find you.

## Related

- [Desktop app](https://tamag0.ai/docs/desktop-app.md)
- [Collaboration](https://tamag0.ai/docs/collaboration.md)
- [Scheduled tasks & watchdog](https://tamag0.ai/docs/scheduled-tasks.md)
- [Continuous learning](https://tamag0.ai/docs/continuous-learning.md)