Managing Claude and Codex Sessions with Flow

Flow treats Claude and Codex as first-class coding runtimes in the same project loop: tasks, sessions, skills, and commit gates all live together.

Core Workflow

# 1) Enter repo and inspect runnable workflows
cd <repo>
f tasks list

# 2) Resume exact prior AI context
f ai claude resume <session-id>
# or
f ai codex resume <session-id>

# 3) Keep skills synced to current tasks
f skills sync
f skills reload

# 4) Run the smallest meaningful validation
f test-related

# 5) Commit through flow's review/testing gates
f commit

This is the fastest way to keep context stable and avoid drift across sessions.

Session Operations

# Fuzzy-select and resume (all providers)
f ai

# Provider-specific listing
f ai claude list
f ai codex list

# Resume by exact ID / prefix / alias
f ai claude resume a38cf8bf-f4e2-4308-8b27-0254f89c4385
f ai codex resume 019c61c5-0aef-71a1-b058-5c9ab43013d4
f ai resume my-feature

# Search Codex sessions globally by prompt text and resume the best match
f ai codex find "make plan to get designer"

# Search Codex sessions globally by prompt text and copy the best match
f ai codex findAndCopy "make plan to get designer"

# Save alias
f ai save my-feature --id <session-id>

# Copy context/history for handoff
f ai context
f ai copy

Resume Semantics You Should Rely On

Exact Claude resumes are strict

When you pass an explicit session (name or id), Flow will not auto-open a different conversation if that ID fails.

• tries claude --resume <id>
• if failed, exits non-zero
• no automatic --continue fallback for explicit IDs

This prevents restoring into the wrong session.

Claude no-arg resume can fallback

f ai claude resume (no argument) resumes the most recent Claude session for this repo. If that fails, Flow can fallback to claude --continue in the same cwd.

Codex resume is direct

Flow resumes Codex by session ID and returns failure if resume fails. No fallback to another session is applied.

TTY is required

Both Claude and Codex resume commands require an interactive terminal (TTY). In non-interactive shells, Flow fails fast with a clear error.

Choosing Claude vs Codex in Flow

• Use Claude sessions when you want broader planning + deep repo narrative continuity.
• Use Codex sessions when you want tight code-edit and review loops with strong tool execution.
• Keep both available in the same repo; switch by resuming the exact session you need.

Task-Driven AI Coding (Important)

AI sessions are most reliable when code execution goes through flow.toml tasks.

If a task prompts for input (like Y/n/a/q workflows), mark it:

[[tasks]]
name = "reclaim"
command = "./mole reclaim"
interactive = true

This keeps TTY passthrough correct for both humans and AI-assisted loops.

Related Docs

• commands/ai.md for command-level semantics and examples
• commands/skills.md for skill sync/reload loop
• commands/commit.md for commit quality/testing gates
• use-flow-to-write-software-better.md for the full operating model