Manage sessions
A terminal opens through a work session, and the connection stays alive even if you close the browser tab. You can reconnect anytime, and—on supported plans—share a session with teammates for real-time collaboration.
Reconnect to a session
Terminal sessions stay active in the background. To return to one, reopen the session and launch the terminal again. Active sessions appear under Access > Sessions; superusers can also see others’ active sessions.
To end a terminal, type exit, or close it from the session.
Connection status
The terminal header shows its current connection state:
| Status | What it means |
|---|---|
| Connecting | Alpacon is opening the connection. |
| Connected | You’re connected and ready to type. |
| Reconnecting | The connection dropped and Alpacon is retrying automatically. Anything you type is held and delivered in order once the connection returns, up to a limit. Past it, further input is not sent and the terminal tells you so. |
| Offline | Your browser has no network connection. The terminal waits and reconnects automatically once you’re back online. |
| Connection lost | Automatic reconnection gave up. Select Retry, or switch to another browser tab and back—that also retries. |
| Disconnected | You were removed from the session, or the connection closed for a reason Alpacon couldn’t identify. This doesn’t reconnect automatically—select Retry to rejoin. |
| Session closed | The session has ended. The message explains why: you closed it, the shell exited, the session reached its idle timeout, an administrator closed it, or the terminal service or agent lost its connection. |
When you close the session yourself or the shell exits, the browser tab also closes automatically if Auto-close terminal is on (see Websh settings). Every other closure leaves the tab open so you can read why.
Share a session
Need someone to help debug? Share your terminal so they can watch—or type alongside you.
Note: Session sharing requires the Essentials plan or above. On the Free plan, sharing shows an upgrade prompt. See Plans & billing.
Click Share on the session and choose one of:
- Invite by email — enter one or more email addresses to invite people directly.
- One-time access link — generate a link to share.
One-time access link
When creating a link, set:
- User permission — choose Read only (watch only) or Read & write (type commands). Links are read-only by default.
- Link expiration — from 5 to 180 minutes (in 5-minute steps; default 30 minutes). The link is single-use: it also expires immediately after it’s first accessed.
Share the link with your teammate. To join, they enter a nickname (shown to collaborators) and the session password.
Participants
Select the participants icon in the terminal header to open the Participants panel. The icon shows how many people are in the session, and the list refreshes on its own while the panel is open. As the owner, select a participant to:
- change their permission between Read only and Writable—the change applies immediately;
- remove them with Remove from session.
Note: A superuser can Force close another user’s session from the session list.
Use cases for sharing
- Debug together — a teammate sees exactly what you see and can suggest or run commands.
- Train safely — share read-only so others can observe without typing.
- Get help — bring in a senior engineer to look at live output.