Session Management

SalmAlm manages conversations as isolated sessions with automatic context window optimization.

Session Lifecycle

New Message → Get/Create Session → Build Context → LLM Call → Store Response → Auto-compact if needed

Each session has:

• Unique ID — alphanumeric, auto-generated or named
• Message history — stored in SQLite (session_store)
• Model override — per-session model selection
• User binding — sessions belong to authenticated users (multi-user mode)

Context Window Management

Feature	Value	Configurable
Compaction threshold	30K tokens	✅ SALMALM_COMPACTION
History trim (chat)	Last 10 messages	✅ via Engine Settings
History trim (creative)	Last 20 messages	✅
Tool result truncation	20K chars max	✅

Auto-Compaction

When context exceeds the threshold, SalmAlm automatically:

1. Sends history to LLM with a compaction prompt
2. Replaces old messages with a compact summary
3. Preserves recent messages (last 4) for continuity
4. Triggers auto_curate() to update memory files

Commands

Command	Description
/context	Show token usage breakdown
/context full	Detailed per-message token counts
/clear	Reset current session
/sessions	List all sessions
/session <id>	Switch to named session
/export	Export session as JSON

Web UI

The Sessions panel shows:

• Active sessions with titles and last activity
• Token usage per session
• One-click session switching
• Session deletion and export

Session Store

Sessions persist in ~/SalmAlm/sessions.db (SQLite). Schema:

CREATE TABLE session_store (
    session_id TEXT PRIMARY KEY,
    messages TEXT,        -- JSON array
    title TEXT,
    user_id INTEGER,
    created_at TEXT,
    updated_at TEXT
);

Multi-User Sessions

When authentication is enabled, sessions are scoped per user. Each user sees only their own sessions. Admin users can view all sessions via the API.