Leaving it running

A run does not need your terminal. Close the window, lose the ssh connection, or /exit and press Detach and exit: the flow goes on taking its turns. Run hmz in the same directory and you are back in it.

At a glance

• You will walk away from a long run and come back to it later, from the same terminal or another one.
• Use it when a run will take longer than you want to sit and watch it, or your connection to the machine may drop.
• You need a flow running in hmz, started as in Your first run.

Try it

While a flow runs, type /exit, press Detach and exit, and later, in the same directory:

hmz

How it works

The run is not held by the hmz you are looking at. It is held on this machine, apart from the terminal, one run per directory, and hmz is a window onto it. Closing the window, on purpose or because the connection dropped, leaves the run where it was. Running hmz again in the same directory opens a new window onto the same run, and reads it from the top.

That has three consequences:

• One run per directory. hmz in a directory always opens that directory's run. Another project has its own.
• Several windows at once. A second terminal, or an ssh session from elsewhere, can open the same run while you still have it open. Each is a whole interface of its own. See Several people on one run.
• The run lives on this machine. Your laptop can close; the machine running hmz cannot. A reboot ends the run.

Example: detach, then come back

Start a flow, as in Your first run. Then type /exit, or press ctrl+q, which asks the same thing:

/exitdrawn, not recorded

  ╭────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
  │                                                                │
  │  A flow is running.                                            │
  │  Detached, it keeps running: run `hmz` here to reattach.       │
  │                                                                │
  │  Stop the flow and exit   Detach and exit                      │ 1
  │                                                                │
  │  enter stop   esc stay                                         │
  │                                                                │
  ╰────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯

1. Detach and exit, and the line under the question, are only there where the run can outlive the terminal. Where it cannot, the button in its place is Cancel; see below.

Stop the flow and exit has the focus as the box opens. Press → to move to Detach and exit, then enter, or click it. Your shell comes back, and the flow is still going.

Later, from any terminal on the same machine:

cd ~/tmp/humanize-demo
hmz

hmz · ralph_loopdrawn, not recorded

0000000000

❯ Fix the bug in calc.py. · by you@tui1

── agent

● agent is working

● Found the bug: add() subtracts. Fixing it now.

✻ Worked for 7s · agent

● agent is working · conversation 2 of 22

agent · claude/claude-haiku-4-5-20251001:high · ● 2

$0.05 · 151 out/s

❯

·/· agent… (24s · ctrl+c twice to stop)3/ commands · shift+enter newline · ← monitor · ctrl+c stop

A new interface on the same run, read from the top. Everything the run did while you were away is here.

What to look at, by number:

1. Your task, marked · by you@tui. The new window reads the run from its first line, so everything said to it is there. A line typed in another window, the one you left included, is marked with who typed it.
2. The rounds you missed. A Ralph loop kept opening a conversation a round. Here it is on its second, and the first one's work is above it.
3. The status line. Still running, with the clock of the turn in progress, and ctrl+c stop as the last key: this window can stop the run as well as the one you left.

Check it worked

• After Detach and exit, the shell prompt comes back at once, with no stopping line.
• hmz in the same directory opens on the flow, still working, and not on a fresh chat.
• The transcript holds turns that happened while you were gone.

Before you walk away

• Say you are away. A flow that asks you something waits for an answer. Type /afk on before you go, and it is answered with nothing instead: away stays said after you have left. A role you claimed is anybody's to answer once you leave. See Being away.
• Give it a budget you can live with. Nobody is watching the spend. See Every run has a budget.
• Know how to stop it later. Open it with hmz, then press ctrl+c twice or type /stop. That stops it for everybody reading it. ctrl+c never leaves a run behind. See Stopping.

Variations

• Just close the window. Closing the terminal or losing the connection does what Detach and exit does. /exit only asks so that you choose on purpose.
• Watch from two places. Leave one hmz open and run another in the same directory, over ssh for example. Leaving one leaves the others reading it.
• Nobody watching at all. A run with no one at any window belongs on a command line: see Run it unattended.

When it can't be left running

Then the interface holds the run in its own process, and closing the terminal ends the run. /exit offers Cancel in place of Detach and exit. That happens when:

• stdin or stdout is not a terminal: output redirected to a file, or input from a pipe;

• HUMANIZE_DAEMON is off, 0 or no, for a machine where a run should end with its window:

  HUMANIZE_DAEMON=off hmz

• humanize could not set it up, which it says as it opens: hmz: runs cannot be detached from the terminal (…), so they will run in this process instead.

Troubleshooting

hmz opened on an idle prompt, not on my run

You are in another directory. A run belongs to the directory it was started in: cd there and run hmz again.

The run was gone when I came back

The machine was restarted, or the run ended by itself: its budget was spent, or the flow finished. /epics lists it with how it ended. A flow that can be picked up carries on with /resume; see Picking a run up.

It was waiting for me the whole time

A question was put to you and nobody answered. Turn /afk on before you leave.

/exit offers Cancel instead of Detach and exit

The run cannot outlive this terminal. See When it can't be left running.

Next steps

• Being away (/afk): keep a run you left from waiting on you.
• Stopping: end it when you are back.
• Picking a run up: carry on after a reboot or a stop.
• The terminal can leave: how a run outlives its terminal, drawn.
• Daemon reference: the details.