---
title: "Core concepts"
description: "Workspaces, tabs, panes — and the background server that owns them all."
---
Four words explain most of tty7. Three of them you can see; the fourth is the
reason the other three survive a reboot.
## Pane
A **pane** is one terminal: one shell (or one program) attached to one PTY. It
is the only thing in tty7 that actually runs something.
Panes have stable ids — `%42` — for their whole life. That id is what the
[CLI](/cli/overview) addresses, and what `$TTY7_PANE` holds inside the pane
itself.
## Tab
A **tab** is a layout of panes. One pane to start with; split it and the tab
holds two, arranged in rows and columns you can drag around.
Tabs appear in the sidebar (or the top strip, if you move it there). A tab's
label is the best evidence tty7 has: a name you set, else the coding agent
running in it, else the last segment of its working directory.
## Workspace
A **workspace** is a named set of tabs — a project, usually. One window shows
one workspace at a time, and ⌘ ⇧ O opens the switcher to move between
them or open a second window on another one.
The switcher is one flat list, most recently used first — local and remote
workspaces together, each row wearing the machine it lives on. Typing filters
by workspace, tab, or machine name, so typing a machine's name is how you see
just that machine. ⌘ ⇧ N opens the New Workspace form, where you
pick the machine (this computer, or any configured SSH host) and optionally a
name.
Workspaces are how tty7 keeps ten repositories from becoming forty
indistinguishable tabs. They also travel: a workspace on a remote machine is
still a workspace, opened from the same switcher.
## The server
Here is the part that matters. **The window does not own your shells — a
background server does.**
Quitting tty7 closes the window and leaves that server running. Your build keeps
building, your agent keeps working, your SSH session stays up. Open tty7 again
and it reattaches to exactly what was there.
This is also why:
- **`tty7` works from any terminal.** The CLI talks to the same server. The GUI
does not have to be running at all.
- **A crash is not a catastrophe.** Panes come back showing what was on them:
a capped tail of each pane's output is kept on disk and handed to the pane
that reopens on its id.
- **Stopping is explicit.** *Quit and Stop Server…* in the tray menu is the only
ordinary way to end everything, and it warns you first.
Restarting the server ends every process in every pane on that machine —
shells, agents, and SSH sessions alike. Layouts are kept and come back with
fresh shells. Never do it on someone else's behalf without asking.
### What survives what
| | Close a tab | Quit tty7 | Stop the server | Reboot |
|---|:--:|:--:|:--:|:--:|
| The shell keeps running | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ |
| The layout comes back | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| What was on screen comes back | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ 1 |
| A supported agent session resumes | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
1 A capped tail of each pane, restored once. See
[session restore](/reference/troubleshooting#panes-came-back-empty).
## Machines
Everything above exists per **machine**. Your laptop is one; a dev box you
connect to over SSH is another, with its own server, its own workspaces, and its
own panes.
The switcher lists them together, and the CLI reaches them with `-m`:
```bash
tty7 -m devbox ls
```
Remote panes run on the remote machine — the files, the repository, the git
data, and the process tree are all over there.
[Remote workspaces →](/remote/workspaces)
## The three environment variables
Every pane exports these, and anything you launch from one inherits them:
| Variable | What it holds |
|---|---|
| `TTY7_PANE` | This pane's id — the default target of `tty7 split`, `send`, `capture`, `procs`. |
| `TTY7_WS` | This pane's workspace id. |
| `TTY7_CONFIG_DIR` | The config directory, which is how the CLI finds the right server. |
`echo $TTY7_PANE` is the fastest way to tell whether you are inside tty7 at all.
Those ids are the whole interface. The CLI page starts there.