Managing Sessions, Persistence, and Credits

A container is cheap because it runs only when you need it and stops when you do not. This guide teaches the everyday management around that idea: seeing your running containers, switching between them, closing one cleanly, and knowing precisely what is saved and what is thrown away. You will also learn the difference between leaving a viewer and shutting down its container, including what happens when the last terminal exits. Finally, this guide answers the question that makes people nervous about any cloud environment: what does this cost, and how do I make sure a container I forgot about does not run up a bill? After this page you will manage containers without waste or surprise charges.

Containers run on universal usage credits and are available on every plan, including Free. Credits are drawn only while a container is running. A closed container draws nothing. See pricing.

Your Containers List

After this section you will be able to find and manage every container you have running. The Your containers list sits at the top of a project's AI Container screen as soon as you have a container, and shows every session you have live, whichever project you opened it from: queued, scheduling, starting, running, idle, or closing. That includes your containers from other projects and the containers of the Virtual Workers you hired or are the human manager of; an administrator who manages your organization's containers also sees every worker's container there. Each row names the kind of container, shows its status, marks the one you have open, and shows its size and how long it has been up.

From the list you can:

• Open a container to switch to it and work in its terminal, editor, and desktop. The one you have open shows Current instead.
• Terminate a container you are done with. It is stopped at once and its compute is released.
• Graceful close the container you have open while it is running, which lets it finish its work in an orderly way before it closes.
• New container when you need a fresh one, for example at a larger size or with a different desktop editor.

A Virtual Worker's container belongs to the worker, not to the person who started it, so Terminate and Graceful close on a worker's row work only for a role that manages your organization's containers. For anyone else, including the worker's human manager, the request is refused.

This is also your safeguard against forgotten containers. Because the list shows everything you have running and how long each has been up, a container left on is visible rather than hidden, and you can terminate it in one action.

Every Container You Run, in One Place

For more detail on the same containers, open Settings, then Current Containers under User Settings, which opens the My containers page. Totals at the top show how many containers you have, their combined running time, their projected usage in credits, and the next automatic lifetime limit, when one applies. Each container's card shows its kind, its status, how long it has been running, and a live estimate of the credits that running time has used at its hourly rate; the amount actually charged is settled when the container closes. You can search the list or filter it by status. Select a container to inspect it, then Request graceful close or Force stop it. On a Virtual Worker's container both follow the same rule as the list: they work only for a role that manages your organization's containers.

When the Last Terminal Closes or Exits

After this section you will be able to leave, recover, or shut down without losing the terminal screen you were using. Closing the final live terminal is different from closing one of several terminal tabs. When the last shell exits, or when you ask to close it, Backbuild keeps the terminal pane and its scrollback mounted while it asks what should happen next.

Backbuild opens the replacement shell before closing a last live shell that you asked to replace. If replacement fails, it keeps the prompt, the existing terminal, and its scrollback available and shows an error. It does not enter a reconnect loop or discard the screen you may need to copy.

Closing a Container

After this section you will know which way to end a session. There are two ways to close a container, both on its row in your containers list.

• Terminate stops the container at once. It asks you to confirm, then tears the container down without waiting for anything running inside it, so even a container that has stopped responding is closed and stops billing straight away. Any unsaved work in the live session is lost; your home folder is preserved.
• Graceful close, offered on the container you have open while it is running, stops new work from reaching the container and lets it finish writing out its session record, after which it closes. It needs no confirmation.

In practice: save your files (they live in the home folder), then close the container either way without worry.

Exactly What Persists

After this section you will know, with no ambiguity, what survives a shutdown. This is the single most important thing to understand about any disposable cloud environment, and the honest answer for Backbuild containers is simple.

The active session is remembered per project, so if you reload while a container is running, you return to it rather than to the launch screen. When a session ends, that memory clears and the next visit starts fresh at the launch screen. Nothing you did not save to the home folder is retained as machine state. Because the home folder is written back when the container shuts down, not continuously while it runs, a container that is lost without shutting down, for example when the machine under it fails, loses the changes made in that session; push work that matters to a repository as you go. Paired coding-agent access follows a separate path: the container restores it from the vault you chose, not from a file copied out of the old machine. If the grant has been revoked or is unavailable, the affected agent stays signed out instead of falling back to another credential source.

What It Costs, and How to Avoid a Surprise Bill

After this section you will be able to reason about container cost with confidence. Cost has one governing rule: you pay for the time a container runs, from the moment it is ready until it closes. Everything else follows from that.

• The rate is the credits-per-hour on the size card. Larger sizes cost more per hour; smaller ones cost less. Running time is charged by the second, with a one-minute minimum per session, when the container closes.
• The status bar keeps the cost in view. While a container runs, the bar along the bottom of its terminal shows a running estimate of the credits the session has used so far (the size's rate times the time since it became ready) and how long it has been up; the exact charge is settled when the container closes.
• Closed containers cost nothing. There is no charge for a container that is not running, and no separate charge for keeping your home folder between sessions.
• Real-time syncing to a running container draws from your Real-Time Session Minutes, of which every organization gets 10,800 free each month, and only active time counts; idle time never does.

A container you launch keeps running, and keeps drawing credits, until you close it: stepping away from the keyboard or closing the browser tab does not stop it. That is deliberate, because a long build or an agent run should not die when you look away. The safeguards are in your hands and your administrator's:

• Close it when you are done. Use Terminate or Graceful close in your containers list, or Yes, shut down when the last terminal closes.
• Check the list. Your containers list shows everything you have running and for how long, and Current Containers in Settings adds the projected credits, so a forgotten container is visible and one action from closed.
• Limits your administrator sets. Under Settings, then Policies, then Containers, an administrator can cap how many containers your organization runs at once, and can give containers that start automatically for AI work a maximum lifetime.
• No credits, no new containers. A container cannot be launched while your organization's credit balance is at zero or below.

Where to Next

• Universal Usage Credits: what a credit buys, packages, and rollover.
• Real-Time Session Minutes: the active-sync allowance and how it meters.
• Container Policies and Administration: for admins, controlling sizes, backends, and who can launch.