---
title: How to Manage DigitalOcean Harness Runtime Sessions (public)
description: List, show, pause, resume, attach, detach, log, and remove Harness Runtime sessions with doctl harness-runtime or the Control Panel.
product: Managed Agents
url: https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/managed-agents/agent-harness-runtime/how-to/manage-sessions/
last_updated: "2026-10-09"
---

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# How to Manage DigitalOcean Harness Runtime Sessions (public)

DigitalOcean Harness Runtime provides managed, hardware-isolated microVM sandboxes with built-in tools such as Chromium to run harnesses and execute arbitrary code. Rich lifecycle APIs preserve conversational history and working state across sessions, letting you pause, resume, and fork work to control costs and adapt to the nonlinear nature of agentic workflows. Scale complete agents such as Claude Code or use sandboxes independently for code execution, all through the same service. See [What You Can Build](https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/managed-agents/agent-harness-runtime/details/what-you-can-build/index.html.md) for example use cases.

All sessions are displayed in the **Sessions** tab of **Harness Runtime**.

Use `doctl harness-runtime` commands or the Control Panel to manage the lifecycle of sessions.

## Pause, Resume, and Remove a Session Using the CLI

Provide the session name or ID to the `doctl` command. To list sessions and their status, use `doctl harness-runtime list`. To show details for one session, use `doctl harness-runtime show <name>`.

Pausing a session suspends its compute while preserving the workspace, the agent’s state, and your conversation history. You can resume it and pick up exactly where you left off to save cost on work that spans hours or days.

```shell
doctl harness-runtime pause <name>
doctl harness-runtime show <name>
doctl harness-runtime resume <name>
```

Sessions auto-pause after 15 minutes of inactivity. Sending a new message to a paused session resumes it.

If the session is bound to a reuse trigger, resuming it or sending it a message wakes it, and the trigger’s firings fail until you pause the session again. For details, see [Choose a Session Mode](https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/managed-agents/agent-harness-runtime/how-to/run-agents-with-triggers/index.html.md#choose-a-session-mode).

## Detach from a Session

Detach closes your local terminal connection and leaves the session running. From an attached prompt, press `Ctrl+D`.

Reattach to the session again with `doctl harness-runtime launch <name>`.

To remove a session when you no longer need it, run:

```shell
doctl harness-runtime remove <name>
```

Removing a session tears down the sandbox and stops compute charges.

## Use the Control Panel

You can view sessions and chat history in the **Sessions** tab of **Harness Runtime** in DigitalOcean Control Panel. To pause or resume a session, click **…** for the session and select **Pause** or **Resume**. Click **Destroy Session** to remove the session.