shelbi open

shelbi open [OPTIONS] <NAME>

shelbi open ensures a workspace's session is up so the TUI can show it. For a workspace with an issue assigned to it (in todo, in progress, or serving a review), it is a no-op: dispatch owns that agent's session. If any session is already live for the workspace, it also does nothing. For an idle workspace it starts a plain interactive login shell ($SHELL -l) in the worktree, so there is something to focus. If the worktree is missing, the shell starts in the machine's work_dir.

That shell marks the workspace as occupied by you, so the orchestrator won't dispatch to it while it's open (shelbi workspace list shows occupied (user shell)). It isn't a managed agent session: exit the shell to free the slot, and Shelbi won't relaunch it.

It's the single entry point behind the sidebar's click-to-focus: the "is this workspace's session up?" check lives here, so callers never have to branch on it themselves. It works the same for local and remote workspaces; a remote session runs on its own machine and is reached over SSH.

open only ensures the session exists for the dashboard. To connect your own terminal directly to a workspace's session instead, use shelbi attach.

Arguments

Flags

Examples

Ensure the alpha workspace's session is up:

shelbi open alpha

See also

• Workspaces — what a workspace is, its session lifecycle, and the local vs. remote distinction.
• shelbi attach — connect your terminal directly to a workspace's session rather than only ensuring it is up for the dashboard.