How Claude Tag works changedclaude-tag/concepts/how-it-works
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141141Three ideas recur across this page and the rest of these docs.
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143143* **Agent identity**: in channels, Claude acts under its own service accounts that an admin provisions, not as the person who asked. What it can reach is set per channel, so everyone in a channel works with the same access. See [How agent identity works](/docs/claude-tag/concepts/agent-identity).
144* **Scheduling and long-running work**: a task can run on a schedule, trigger on a repository event, or keep going across many turns in one thread. The same channel access applies whether a person or a schedule started it. See [Set up routines](/docs/claude-tag/users/proactivity).
144* **Scheduling and long-running work**: a task can run on a schedule, follow a pull request and act when it changes, or keep going across many turns in one thread. The same channel access applies whether a person or a schedule started it. See [Set up routines](/docs/claude-tag/users/proactivity).
145145* **Memory**: what Claude learns in public channels is saved as workspace memory that any channel can use; private channels keep their own. See [What Claude remembers](/docs/claude-tag/users/memory).
146146
147147## Lifecycle of a request
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221221
222222### What survives between replies
223223
224The thread is durable; the sandbox is not. When a session is idle, its sandbox is released, and it is rebuilt when the next message arrives.
224A thread is durable, but the sandbox behind it is not. Durable means the thread, and everything Claude read and said in it, stays in Slack and stays available to the session for as long as the thread exists. The sandbox is the computer where Claude runs commands and keeps working files for a task. A few minutes after a session finishes its turn, Anthropic releases its sandbox, and the same session resumes in a fresh one when the next message arrives. A thread's session keeps resuming this way for as long as people use the thread. Claude replaces it with a new session in two cases.
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226| When | What Claude does |
227| :-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | :----------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
228| Someone sends [`@Claude !restart`](/docs/claude-tag/users/commands#restart-a-stuck-or-wrong-context-session) | Archives the session right away and starts a fresh one that rereads the thread |
229| The session [gets stuck and fails](/docs/claude-tag/users/troubleshooting#claude-reacted-or-started-thinking-then-never-replied) | Starts the replacement when the next message arrives in the thread |
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226231<img className="block dark:hidden" src="https://mintcdn.com/claude-ai/5JFKyLlO7sHMMf5J/images/claude-tag/diagrams/session-lifecycle.svg?fit=max&auto=format&n=5JFKyLlO7sHMMf5J&q=85&s=9a56231787b03f179e8d552d887778fc" alt="Timeline with two lanes. The Slack thread lane is one continuous bar that persists from the moment a task starts. The sandbox lane below it is segmented, built when the task starts, released while the thread goes quiet, and rebuilt fresh when someone replies." width="1000" height="270" data-path="images/claude-tag/diagrams/session-lifecycle.svg" />
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228233<img className="hidden dark:block" src="https://mintcdn.com/claude-ai/5JFKyLlO7sHMMf5J/images/claude-tag/diagrams/session-lifecycle-dark.svg?fit=max&auto=format&n=5JFKyLlO7sHMMf5J&q=85&s=0693a90b98baa729dcacfd35261f6494" alt="Timeline with two lanes. The Slack thread lane is one continuous bar that persists from the moment a task starts. The sandbox lane below it is segmented, built when the task starts, released while the thread goes quiet, and rebuilt fresh when someone replies." width="1000" height="270" data-path="images/claude-tag/diagrams/session-lifecycle-dark.svg" />
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235240| Files that exist only in the sandbox | No. Claude recreates them if asked. |
236241
237242For long tasks, ask it to push branches and post drafts as it goes, so deliverables are saved somewhere durable while the work is still running. See [Good habits](/docs/claude-tag/users/good-habits#give-every-task-a-definition-of-done).
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244The channel's own session, the one that handles top-level messages outside any thread, lives longer than a thread's. Claude replaces it with a fresh one when a top-level message arrives after about an hour with no top-level activity, when the session is about a day old, or when the channel's configuration has changed since the session started. Channel memory and the channel's history are unaffected, so the only visible effect is that Claude no longer carries what the previous session had been working on.
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246Claude also stops reading a channel's top-level messages once about 100 of them have arrived since it last posted or replied there. An `@Claude` mention in the channel starts it reading again; see [When Claude stops reading a channel](/docs/claude-tag/users/when-claude-responds#when-claude-stops-reading-a-channel). These thresholds are defaults and can change, so treat the numbers as approximate.
238247
239248### Channel and workspace memory
240249
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