# Session Management Overview

Sessions in AgentDock provide a foundation for stateful interactions between users and AI agents. This document outlines the core concepts, architecture, and design principles of the session management system.

## Core Concepts

### What is a Session?

A session represents a single conversation between a user and an agent. It maintains state across multiple interactions, ensuring continuity and context preservation. Each session is identified by a unique ID (SessionId) and contains all the state necessary for the conversation to progress.

### Session Isolation

Session isolation is a critical feature that prevents different conversations from interfering with each other. This is especially important in multi-user environments where multiple conversations may be happening concurrently.

### Single Source of Truth

AgentDock follows a "single source of truth" principle for session management, where:

1. Session IDs are generated at a single point in the system
2. Session state is managed centrally
3. All components access the same session state

This design eliminates issues with duplicate sessions or inconsistent state.

## Architecture

The session management system consists of several key components:

### SessionManager

The `SessionManager` is a generic class that provides core session creation, retrieval, and update capabilities. It is designed to be extended for different types of session state.

### Session State Types

AgentDock uses several types of session state:

1. **Base Session State** - Core session data including the session ID
2. **AgentSession** - Extended state for agent interactions
3. **OrchestrationState** - State specific to orchestration workflows
4. **Tool-specific State** - Some tools maintain their own session state

### Session Lifecycle

1. **Creation** - Sessions are created when a user starts a new conversation
2. **Access** - Components access session state to perform operations
3. **Updates** - State is updated as the conversation progresses
4. **Cleanup** - Sessions are eventually deleted when they expire

## Implementation Principles

### Immutability

Session states are treated as immutable objects. Updates create new state objects rather than modifying existing ones, preventing race conditions in concurrent access.

### Lazy Loading

Sessions are loaded only when needed, improving performance by avoiding unnecessary state creation.

### TTL (Time-to-Live)

Sessions have a configurable TTL, after which they are automatically cleaned up to prevent memory leaks.

### Conditional Creation

Session state is only created for components that need it, reducing memory usage.

## Integration Points

### LLM Integration

Sessions provide context for LLM interactions, including:
- Conversation history
- System prompts
- Tool usage patterns

### Tool System Integration

Tools access session state to:
- Maintain tool-specific context
- Track previous tool invocations
- Share data between invocations

### Orchestration Integration

The orchestration system relies on sessions to:
- Track active steps
- Manage tool availability
- Store transition conditions
- Record tool sequences

## Conclusion

The session management system forms a critical foundation for AgentDock's stateful agent capabilities. By providing consistent, isolated, and efficient state management, it enables complex conversational interactions while maintaining performance and reliability. 