Threads

A thread is one conversation with one agent, tied to one working directory. It's the basic unit you interact with in LinkCode — every message, tool call, and permission prompt you see belongs to exactly one thread.

Status

A thread moves through a small set of states as you use it:

• Starting — the agent process is being launched.
• Idle — the agent is ready and waiting for you to say something.
• Running — the agent is actively working on your last message.
• Awaiting input — the agent has stopped to ask you something, most often a permission request.
• Stopped — there's no live agent process behind this thread right now. The thread and its history are still there; nothing is currently running.

Creating a thread

Start a new thread from the New Task button at the top of the sidebar, or open the command palette (⌘K on macOS, Ctrl+K on Windows) and use New thread. Either way, you pick an agent and a working directory — see workspaces for how directories are registered.

Stopping vs. closing

These sound similar but do different things:

• Stopping a thread ends the agent's live process but keeps the thread in your sidebar, now in the Stopped state. You can resume it later.
• Closing a thread removes it from LinkCode's list entirely (and stops any live run first). This does not touch the agent's own transcript on disk — the underlying conversation history the agent itself keeps is untouched, so a closed thread can still be brought back later through import.

Import history

Agents like Claude Code keep their own conversation history outside of LinkCode (for example, everything you've run through the claude CLI). Import history pulls one of those existing conversations into LinkCode as a thread, so you can keep working on it from the LinkCode interface.

Which agents let you resume a cold (previously closed or stopped) thread — versus only import it read-only, or not at all — differs per agent. See the agents overview for the full comparison instead of guessing from one agent's behavior.