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

func main() {
    client := copilot.NewClient()
    client.Start()
    defer client.Stop()

    // Create session with a memorable ID
    session, _ := client.CreateSession(copilot.SessionConfig{
        SessionID: "user-123-conversation",
        Model:     "gpt-5",
    })

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

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

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

Resuming a session

client := copilot.NewClient()
client.Start()
defer client.Stop()

// Resume the previous session
session, _ := client.ResumeSession("user-123-conversation")

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

session.Destroy()

Listing available sessions

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

Deleting a session permanently

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

Getting session history

messages, _ := session.GetMessages()
for _, msg := range messages {
    fmt.Printf("[%s] %v\n", msg.Type, msg.Data)
}

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