An issue is the durable work record
An issue stores the title, human description, technical brief, lifecycle stage, dependencies, placement, todos, artifacts, and attached sessions. The issue remains after a session hibernates. Use an issue for work that needs planning, dependencies, isolated files, or review history. A direct session is suitable for exploration that does not need that durable record.A session is a durable conversation
A session is the durable record for one agent conversation. It tracks the transcript, machine, repository, model, effort, attention state, and current terminal process. Podium can reconnect a browser to the same pseudo-terminal (PTY), so closing the browser does not end the process. Stopping the process places a resumable session in the hibernated state while keeping its record and transcript. An issue-backed session also keeps its branch, and Podium can recreate its worktree. A session may belong to an issue. One issue can retain more than one session, such as an implementation run and a later review run.An agent acts through a harness
An agent is the active coding participant inside a session. The harness is the installed command-line interface that Podium launches, such as Claude Code, Codex, Grok, OpenCode, Cursor, or Pi. Podium uses each harness’s native authentication and conversation behavior. Capabilities differ by harness. Do not assume that handoff, model selection, usage reporting, or native subagent visibility works identically across all of them.Session completion is not issue completion
These states answer different questions:
Follow the issue lifecycle when moving work between these states.