Environment variable persistence

By default, sess never captures environment variables — a snapshot's env map is empty unless you explicitly opt in.

Allow-listing variables

In ~/.config/sess/config.toml:

[environment]
persist = ["NODE_ENV", "EDITOR", "PROJECT_ENV"]

On sess save, for every name in persist that's actually set in your current shell, its value is captured into the snapshot. Names not in the list are never touched, and names in the list that aren't currently set are simply skipped.

Secrets

sess isn't a secrets manager, and doesn't try to guess which of your variables are sensitive on its own — it only ever looks at names you explicitly listed. As a safety net, though, if an allow-listed name contains a common secret-shaped substring —

*_KEY
*_TOKEN
*_SECRET
PASSWORD
AUTH
CREDENTIAL

— sess save still persists it (you asked for it by name), but prints a warning so it doesn't happen silently:

warning: 'GITHUB_TOKEN' looks like it might hold a secret — persisting it
anyway because it's explicitly listed in your config.

Restoring

On sess open, persisted variables are re-exported into every pane's shell before its saved command is relaunched, so the command sees them the same way it did originally. sess prints a one-line summary of what was restored:

restoring 2 persisted env var(s): EDITOR, NODE_ENV

If a snapshot has no persisted variables — the common case — nothing is printed and nothing changes.