Durable PTY: Open-Source Tool Keeps AI Coding Agents Alive Across Crashes and Reboots
jasonkneen · x · 2026-10-17
Jason Kneen released Durable PTY, an open-source Rust tool (MIT) that keeps shells and AI coding agents running through app crashes, daemon restarts, and even reboots.
Key design points:
- Single binary acting as daemon, CLI, and MCP server; tested against the real claude and codex CLIs
- Each session runs in its own helper process: app/browser crashes don't affect it — reattach by id or name and get the current screen plus live output
- If the daemon is killed (kill -9), each session's shim keeps the process running; the daemon reattaches on start and catches up on missed output
- Processes can't survive reboots, but sessions and history live in SQLite and are restored when the daemon starts; agents default to an on-failure restart policy, resuming via e.g. claude --resume
Install via Homebrew, curl script, or cargo; supports macOS (Apple silicon/Intel) and Linux (x8664/aarch64).
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