Session List
Use Session List to find and open this project’s open and saved Zide Assist sessions.
Navigate sessions
To open Session List, click Assist > Session List.
Sessions are grouped into Open Sessions and History sections.
Open sessions show whether Zide is Working, Needs you for a decision, or is Ready for your next message; these states match Session Watch. Click an open session to open the session in a Zide Assist content tab.
Saved sessions in the History section are listed chronologically and open read-only. An ordinary click opens a preview, reusing an available preview tab; if that session is already open, Zide focuses its existing tab. Choose Open in New Tab, Ctrl/Cmd-click, or middle-click to create a separate read-only view. Choose More actions or right-click a saved session to open it, open it in a new tab, export it as Markdown, or delete it.
A normally opened preview shows Continue Session. Continuing resumes the same history entry. A saved session opened in its own tab shows Continue as New Session. Continuing from that tab creates an independent branched session and leaves the original saved session unchanged.
A warning beside the Continue button appears when the selected model has little remaining context capacity or cannot fit the saved transcript. Switching models updates the warning. If the continued session later runs out of room, Zide offers to compact older messages or start a new session.
In the activity panel, Session List, New Session Tab, the filter icon, and More actions share the title row. To open a new Zide Assist session, click New Session Tab.
Session List options are in its Options menu: the More actions icon on the activity’s title row, or the Options icon in a Session List tab. The menu groups display choices under View and Save Session History under History, followed by Delete Old Sessions. A radio dot on the left marks the selected List or Tree view. A checkmark in the same position marks an enabled setting, such as Compact Mode or Save Session History. In the activity, the menu also starts with New Session Tab and Show Filters.
To delete old saved sessions, select Delete Old Sessions in the Options menu. In Older than, select an age: 1 week, 1 month, 3 months, 1 year, or Any age. The dialog says how many saved sessions Zide will delete. Open sessions keep their history. You cannot undo the deletion. The command is unavailable when there are no saved sessions.
Right-click the panel background for list options. This does not select a session. For actions on a saved session, right-click that session’s row.
Zide Assist sessions and Session List do not offer Assist with This or Ask Zide.
See which sessions came from which
Sessions branch. Continuing a saved session in its own tab, Fork from here, Fork to worktree, and Cut Session Here each start a session that came from another one.
To show those relationships, open the Session List Options menu and select Tree under View. In Tree, each session is listed under the session it came from. Select List to return to the flat list.
In Tree:
- A nested session says where it branched, for example Forked at message 12. Click that line to open the session it came from at that message.
- Compacted twice on a session covers the messages Zide saved each time it compacted that session. Click it to show or to hide those saved parts.
- A session whose original session was deleted stays at the top level and reads From a deleted session. A session that you moved to a worktree reads From a session in another folder, because Zide saves it with that worktree.
- Open Sessions and History stay separate. A session in one group that came from a session in the other names it, for example Continued from Database upgrade.
- There are no date headings. Each family of sessions is listed by its most recent session, and every session still shows its own time.
- Use the chevron to collapse or to expand a session’s branches. The arrow keys move between sessions: Right opens a session or steps into it, and Left closes it or steps out.
Filters work in both views. In Tree, sessions that do not match but that a matching session came from stay listed in dimmer text, so you can see where the match belongs. The line above the list counts only the matches.
Filter sessions
Click the Show filters icon, or press Ctrl+F. To search sessions, type in the Search sessions field. To filter sessions by date, select a time range in Date, such as Last 7 days.
A session matches when the searched text contains every word you type, in any order. To match words as one phrase, put them in double quotes, for example "migration failed". Case does not matter. Spaces, tabs, and line breaks match each other. Other characters, including punctuation, must match exactly. Wildcards and regular expressions are not supported.
In Search in, select the text to search: Titles and messages, Titles only, My messages, or Zide Assist replies. The search does not include tool calls, tool output, or thinking. Search includes unsaved messages in open sessions. Zide searches on this computer and does not send your sessions to a service. Session List searches only this project. To search the sessions of all open projects, use Universal Finder.
To find sessions that read or changed a file, type part of its path in File. You can use File with or without search text. Paths are relative to the project folder, and / and \ match each other.
You can also right-click a file or folder in the file browser and select Find in Session List. For a file, File matches only that file. For a folder, File matches paths in that folder and its subfolders. If you edit File, it matches part of a path again.
In Show, select Open sessions to list only the sessions in the Open Sessions section, or Saved sessions for only the History section.
In Model, select a model to list the sessions that used it. A session that changed models is listed under each model it ran, including a model whose messages Compact Session moved into a saved copy. Not recorded lists the sessions that have no model, which older versions of Zide did not save. Model is hidden when the sessions used only one model.
In Relationship, select how a session started:
| Value | Sessions |
|---|---|
| Branched | Made with Continue as New Session, Fork from here, or Fork to worktree |
| Continued | Kept after Cut Session Here |
| Compacted | Compacted with Compact Session, and the copies that hold the messages it removed |
| Not related | No link to another session. Reusing a tab with New Session does not create a link. |
A session that other sessions were made from is not Not related, but it is not Branched or Continued either: those values name how a session itself started. Use Any relationship to include it. A session forked to a worktree keeps the link in this project, although the fork itself belongs to the worktree’s project. Sessions saved before Zide recorded these links are Not related.
When messages match, the session shows an excerpt with the matches highlighted. If the session has more matches than the excerpt shows, a line under it gives the number of additional matches, for example +2 more matches. With File, it also shows the matching paths. If an excerpt is shown, click the session to open it at the highlighted word or phrase. Find opens with that word or phrase unless a line break or formatting splits it in the transcript.
When a filter is set, a line above the list shows the number of matches. Each filter that is set shows as a chip above it, for example Model: Claude Opus 5. Click a chip to change the filter, or click its x to remove it. To remove all of them, click Clear filters at the end of the count line. In a narrow panel the button says Clear.