Run Your First Session
Creating or editing an agent never starts anything. Start Shell is the one explicit action that spawns a terminal for it, using its configured provider and working directory if you set them.
1. Start a shell for your agent
From the agent's own page, or by right-clicking its tile in the roster, choose Start Shell.
You will see: a new terminal pane opens. If you set a default AI provider in Create your first agent, it launches automatically inside the new pane; otherwise you get a plain shell you type into yourself.
2. Watch its live status
While the shell is running, the agent shows one of these statuses, visible in the pane and wherever else that agent appears (its roster tile, its Neural Map node):
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Connecting | The session is starting up. |
| Idle | Ready, not currently running anything. |
| Executing | Actively running a command. |
| Interactive | Waiting on you for input. |
| Paused | Deliberately paused; won't proceed until resumed. |
| Exited | The process has ended. |
| Error | Something went wrong. |
Three further statuses — Thinking, Waiting, and Syncing — appear only when the running process itself sends an explicit signal that it's in that state; NEXUS never guesses at them. See the Agents guide for the full table.
3. Pause, resume, or end it
A pane's own menu offers Pause Shell / Resume Shell and Kill Shell — kill ends the process but keeps the pane's last output on screen, rather than removing it outright.
About Session Replay
A session's own settings include a link into Session Replay — an experimental, off-by-default view that replays which files a past session touched, as a static map of the repository it ran in. It has nothing to do with the live status above; it's a separate, later feature you can turn on from Settings ▸ Agents once you have sessions worth reviewing. See the Settings reference.
Next
Continue to Panes and layout.
Where to go next
- Agents guide — the full live-status table, and everything else an agent's page configures.
- Window & Panes — switching a pane between its Terminal and Agent & Skills views.