awesome-copilot/cookbook/copilot-sdk/go/persisting-sessions.md

Session Persistence and Resumption

Save and restore conversation sessions across application restarts.

Example scenario

You want users to be able to continue a conversation even after closing and reopening your application.

Runnable example: recipe/persisting-sessions.go

cd recipe
go run persisting-sessions.go

Creating a session with a custom ID

package main

import (
    "context"
    "fmt"
    copilot "github.com/github/copilot-sdk/go"
)

func main() {
    ctx := context.Background()
    client := copilot.NewClient(nil)
    client.Start(ctx)
    defer client.Stop()

    // Create session with a memorable ID
    session, _ := client.CreateSession(ctx, &copilot.SessionConfig{
    	OnPermissionRequest: copilot.PermissionHandler.ApproveAll,
        SessionID: "user-123-conversation",
        Model:     "gpt-5.4",
    })

    session.SendAndWait(ctx, copilot.MessageOptions{Prompt: "Let's discuss TypeScript generics"})

    // Session ID is preserved
    fmt.Println(session.SessionID)

    // Disconnect session but keep data on disk
    session.Disconnect()
}

Resuming a session

ctx := context.Background()
client := copilot.NewClient(nil)
client.Start(ctx)
defer client.Stop()

// Resume the previous session
session, _ := client.ResumeSession(ctx, "user-123-conversation", &copilot.ResumeSessionConfig{OnPermissionRequest: copilot.PermissionHandler.ApproveAll})

// Previous context is restored
session.SendAndWait(ctx, copilot.MessageOptions{Prompt: "What were we discussing?"})

session.Disconnect()

Listing available sessions

sessions, _ := client.ListSessions(ctx, nil)
for _, s := range sessions {
    fmt.Println("Session:", s.SessionID)
}

Deleting a session permanently

// Remove session and all its data from disk
client.DeleteSession(ctx, "user-123-conversation")

Getting session history

messages, _ := session.GetMessages(ctx)
for _, msg := range messages {
    if d, ok := msg.Data.(*copilot.AssistantMessageData); ok {
        fmt.Printf("[assistant.message] %s\n", d.Content)
    }
}

Best practices

1. Use meaningful session IDs: Include user ID or context in the session ID
2. Handle missing sessions: Check if a session exists before resuming
3. Clean up old sessions: Periodically delete sessions that are no longer needed